Ok, so the problem boils down to the sort at the end.
The query up through the merge join on domain is as fast as its going to get. The sort at the end however, should not happen ideally. There are not that many rows returned, and it should hash_aggregate if it thinks there is enough space to do so.
The query planner is going to choose the sort > agg over the hash-agg if it estimates the total number of resulting rows to be large enough so that the hash won't fit in work_mem. However, there seems to be another factor here based on this:
GroupAggregate (cost=11745105.66..12277396.
select
and a.results > 100
and a."user" < 30000 ) c
group by c."user", c.category
It shouldn't make a difference, but I've seen things like this help before so its worth a try. Make sure work_mem is reasonably sized for this test.
Another thing that won't be that fast, but may avoid the sort, is to select the subselection above into a temporary table, analyze it, and then do the outer select. Make sure your settings for temporary space (temp_buffers in 8.3) are large enough for the intermediate results (700MB should do it). That won't be that fast, but it will most likely be faster than sorting 50 million + rows. There are lots of problems with this approach but it may be worth the experiment.
The query up through the merge join on domain is as fast as its going to get. The sort at the end however, should not happen ideally. There are not that many rows returned, and it should hash_aggregate if it thinks there is enough space to do so.
The query planner is going to choose the sort > agg over the hash-agg if it estimates the total number of resulting rows to be large enough so that the hash won't fit in work_mem. However, there seems to be another factor here based on this:
GroupAggregate (cost=11745105.66..12277396.
81 rows=28704 width=12)"
" -> Sort (cost=11745105.66..11878034.93 rows=53171707 width=12)"
" Sort Key: a."user", b.category"
" -> Merge Join (cost=149241.25..1287278.89 rows=53171707 width=12)"
" Merge Cond: (b.domain = a.domain)"
The planner actually thinks there will only be 28704 rows returned of width 12. But it chooses to sort 53 million rows before aggregating. Thats either a bug or there's something else wrong here. That is the wrong way to aggregate those results no matter how much work_mem you have unless I'm completely missing something...
You can try rearranging the query just to see if you can work around this. What happens if you compare the explain on:
select
and a.results > 100
and a."user" < 30000
group by a."user", b.category
to
" -> Sort (cost=11745105.66..11878034.93 rows=53171707 width=12)"
" Sort Key: a."user", b.category"
" Merge Cond: (b.domain = a.domain)"
The planner actually thinks there will only be 28704 rows returned of width 12. But it chooses to sort 53 million rows before aggregating. Thats either a bug or there's something else wrong here. That is the wrong way to aggregate those results no matter how much work_mem you have unless I'm completely missing something...
You can try rearranging the query just to see if you can work around this. What happens if you compare the explain on:
select
a."user", b.category, sum(1.0/b.cat_count)::float
from result a, domain_categories b
where a."domain" = b."domain"
and b.depth < 4from result a, domain_categories b
where a."domain" = b."domain"
and a.results > 100
and a."user" < 30000
group by a."user", b.category
to
select
c."user", c.category, sum(1.0/c.cat_count)::float
from (select a."user", b.category, b.cat_count
from result a, domain_categories b
where a."domain" = b."domain"
and b.depth < 4from (select a."user", b.category, b.cat_count
from result a, domain_categories b
where a."domain" = b."domain"
and a.results > 100
and a."user" < 30000 ) c
group by c."user", c.category
It shouldn't make a difference, but I've seen things like this help before so its worth a try. Make sure work_mem is reasonably sized for this test.
Another thing that won't be that fast, but may avoid the sort, is to select the subselection above into a temporary table, analyze it, and then do the outer select. Make sure your settings for temporary space (temp_buffers in 8.3) are large enough for the intermediate results (700MB should do it). That won't be that fast, but it will most likely be faster than sorting 50 million + rows. There are lots of problems with this approach but it may be worth the experiment.
On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 5:47 AM, Moritz Onken <onken@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Am 19.08.2008 um 14:17 schrieb Matthew Wakeling:"Index Scan using result_domain_idx on result (cost=0.00..748720.72 rows=20306816 width=49)"
On Tue, 19 Aug 2008, Moritz Onken wrote:
tablename | attname | n_distinct | correlation
result | domain | 1642 | 1
Well, the important thing is the correlation, which is 1, indicating that Postgres knows that the table is clustered. So I have no idea why it is sorting the entire table.
What happens when you run EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM result ORDER BY domain?
... as it should be.That was just a guess. The query needs to retrieve the data for about 50,000 users. But it should be fast if I don't retrieve the data for specific users but let in run through all rows.
Sounds like an awfully long time to me. Also, I think restricting it to 280 users is probably not making it any faster.
If I hadn't restricted it to 280 users it would have run ~350days...
What makes you say that? Perhaps you could post EXPLAINs of both of the queries.
Matthew
explain insert into setup1 (selectand b.depth < 4
a."user", b.category, sum(1.0/b.cat_count)::float
from result a, domain_categories b
where a."domain" = b."domain"
and a.results > 100
and a."user" < 30000
group by a."user", b.category);
"GroupAggregate (cost=11745105.66..12277396.81 rows=28704 width=12)"
" -> Sort (cost=11745105.66..11878034.93 rows=53171707 width=12)"" -> Merge Join (cost=149241.25..1287278.89 rows=53171707 width=12)"
" Sort Key: a."user", b.category"" -> Index Scan using domain_categories_domain on domain_categories b (cost=0.00..421716.32 rows=5112568 width=12)"
" Merge Cond: (b.domain = a.domain)"
" Filter: (depth < 4)"
" -> Materialize (cost=148954.16..149446.36 rows=39376 width=8)"
" -> Sort (cost=148954.16..149052.60 rows=39376 width=8)"
" Sort Key: a.domain"
" -> Bitmap Heap Scan on result a (cost=1249.93..145409.79 rows=39376 width=8)"
" Recheck Cond: ("user" < 30000)"
" Filter: (results > 100)"
" -> Bitmap Index Scan on result_user_idx (cost=0.00..1240.08 rows=66881 width=0)"
" Index Cond: ("user" < 30000)"
This query limits the number of users to 215 and this query took about 50 minutes.
I could create to temp tables which have only those records which I need for this query. Would this be a good idea?
moritz
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