Ants -- you're on the right track: i tried your suggestion and found that at times during subsequent executions the performance will drop down to about 6 seconds. though periodically it jumps back up to about 3 minutes, and there's no other DB server usage during these times (i.e. i'm the only one connected). i should note, however, that the 8.2 version has not once been slow with this query. so it may be a cache issue, though i have other queries, also slow in the 8.4 version, and continue to be slow, no matter how many times i re-run them. in most cases (so far) i'm able to re-write them to be faster in the 8.4 version, but it's a different formulation than the 8.2 version. (i.e. if i take the 8.2 version and run it on 8.4 it's slow and vice-versa). this means i need to maintain/test two versions of each query during the migration, which is a nightmare for me. (BTW -- forgot to mention this, but the listing__tag table in the examples has ~35 million rows, and there's an index on each column.) as an example: i re-wrote the query to use the full join version, and on the 8.4 version (after a fresh restart of the server) the plan was the same as before: explain analyze select lt.listing_id from listing__tag lt, listing__tag x where lt.tag_name = x.tag_name and x.listing_id = 91032370 group by lt.listing_id; Group (cost=485411.21..490831.04 rows=488868 width=4) (actual time=5474.662..5636.718 rows=272166 loops=1) -> Sort (cost=485411.21..488121.13 rows=1083967 width=4) (actual time=5474.658..5560.040 rows=295990 loops=1) Sort Key: lt.listing_id Sort Method: external merge Disk: 4048kB -> Nested Loop (cost=35.44..347109.96 rows=1083967 width=4) (actual time=3.908..5090.687 rows=295990 loops=1) -> Index Scan using listing__tag___listing_id on listing__tag x (cost=0.00..283.44 rows=71 width=10) (actu al time=0.050..0.086 rows=11 loops=1) Index Cond: (listing_id = 91032370) -> Bitmap Heap Scan on listing__tag lt (cost=35.44..4868.36 rows=1322 width=14) (actual time=8.664..456.08 7 rows=26908 loops=11) Recheck Cond: (lt.tag_name = x.tag_name) -> Bitmap Index Scan on listing__tag___tag_name (cost=0.00..35.11 rows=1322 width=0) (actual time=7. 065..7.065 rows=26908 loops=11) Index Cond: (lt.tag_name = x.tag_name) Total runtime: 5656.900 ms this top-level join query on the 8.2 machine, despite there being only a single join, performs abysmally (which is why i had to coerce the 8.2 query planner to do the correct nesting in the first place): Group (cost=4172480.61..4232829.15 rows=37744 width=4) -> Sort (cost=4172480.61..4202654.88 rows=12069709 width=4) Sort Key: lt.listing_id -> Hash Join (cost=1312642.10..1927697.87 rows=12069709 width=4) Hash Cond: (x.tag_name = lt.tag_name) -> Index Scan using listing__tag___listing_id on listing__tag x (cost=0.00..3682.79 rows=951 width=13) Index Cond: (listing_id = 91032370) -> Hash (cost=613609.60..613609.60 rows=36151960 width=17) -> Seq Scan on listing__tag lt (cost=0.00..613609.60 rows=36151960 width=17) (only EXPLAIN here on this query as i stopped the first attempt to EXPLAIN ANALYZE after about 15 minutes :-/ ) cheers, -m p.s. on the 8.4 version EXPLAIN ANALYZE *still* tells me that an external merge on disk is happening, despite my setting of work_mem to a full 16 MB this time. does anyone know how to resolve this? or should i even worry about it? On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 2:25 PM, Ants Aasma <ants@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 8:57 PM, Murat Tasan <mmuurr@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> any insights here? > > Have you tried running the slow option multiple times? According to > the explain output all of the time was accounted to the bitmap heap > scan. For the second explain plan the same node was fast. It looks to > me as the first explain on 8.4 was slow because the data was still on > disk. Raising work mem doubled the speed of the sort from 800ms to > 400ms. > > Regards, > Ants Aasma > -- > Cybertec Schönig & Schönig GmbH > Gröhrmühlgasse 26 > A-2700 Wiener Neustadt > Web: http://www.postgresql-support.de -- Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance