On Mon, 2007-09-24 at 14:27 +0100, Simon Riggs wrote: > Csaba, please can you copy that data into fresh tables, re-ANALYZE and > then re-post the EXPLAINs, with stats data. Well, I can of course. I actually tried to generate some random data with similar record count and relations between the tables (which I'm not sure I succeeded at), without the extra columns, but it was happily yielding the nested loop plan. So I guess I really have to copy the whole data (several tens of GB). But from my very limited understanding of what information is available for the planner, I thought that the record count estimated for the join between table_a and table_b1 on column b should be something like (estimated record count in table_a for value "a") * (weight of "b" range covered by table_b1 and table_a in common) / (weight of "b" range covered by table_a) This is if the "b" values in table_a wouldn't be correlated at all with the content of table_b2. The reality is that they are, but the planner has no information about that. I have no idea how the planner works though, so this might be totally off... I will copy the data and send the results (not promising though that it will be today). Cheers, Csaba. ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org