Re: Planner selects different execution plans depending on limit

[Jesper Krogh <jesper@xxxxxxxx>]

On 10/09/12 16:24, bill_martin@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Hi All

I´ve ft_simple_core_content_content_idx
  ON core_content
  USING gin
  (to_tsvector('simple'::regconfig, content) );

 
If I´m seaching for a word which is NOT in the column content the query plan and the execution time differs with the given limit.
If I choose 3927 or any higher number the query execution took only few milliseconds.
 
core_content content where
to_tsvector('simple', content.content) @@ tsquery(plainto_tsquery('simple', 'asdasdadas') :: varchar || ':*')=true
Limit 3927

"Limit  (cost=0.00..19302.23 rows=3926 width=621) (actual time=52147.149..52147.149 rows=0 loops=1)"
"  ->  Seq Scan on core_content content  (cost=0.00..98384.34 rows=20011 width=621) (actual time=52147.147..52147.147 rows=0 loops=1)"
"        Filter: (to_tsvector('simple'::regconfig, content) @@ '''asdasdadas'':*'::tsquery)"
"Total runtime: 52147.173 ms"

Is there any posibility to improve the performance even if the limit is only 10? Is it possible to determine that the query optimizer takes only the fast bitmap heap scan instead of the slow seq scan?

The big hammer is: "set enable_seqscan = off", but if you tell which PG version you're on there may be something to do. I suggest you'd start by bumping the statistics target for the column to 10000 and run analyze to see what that changes.

--
Jesper