[ please keep the mailing list cc'd ] Kenneth Marshall <ktm@xxxxxxxx> writes: > Here are the stats for articles.id: > 4,7,9,11,13,14,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23, > 24,25,26,32,33,34,36,40,41,42,43,44,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,99,100,101,102,106,107,108,109,113,1 14,115,116,117,118,119,120,121,122,123,125,126,127,128,129,130,131,133,134,135,136,137,140,141,142,143,144,145,146,14 7,148,149,150,151,152,153,155,156,157,158,159,160,161,162,163,164,165,166,167,168,169,170,171,172,173,174,175,176,177 ,178,179,180,181,182,183,184,185,186,187,188,189,190,191,192,193,194,195,196,197,198,199,200,201,202,203,204,205,206, 207,208,1209,1210,1212,1213,1214,1215,1216,1219,1220,1221,1222,1223} > That completely matches the max(id) for articles.id. Hm, well it's clear why the planner is going for the mergejoin strategy: it expects to only have to scan a very small fraction of the other table before it's up past objectid = 1223 and can stop merging. And it seems like it's right ... ... oh, now I see: apparently, your filter condition is such that *no* rows of the objectcustomfieldvalues table get past the filter: -> Index Scan using objectcustomfieldvalues3 on objectcustomfieldvalues objectcustomfieldvalues_1 (cost=0.56..807603.40 rows=915 width=4) (actual time=21165.441..21165.441 rows=0 loops=1) Filter: ((disabled = 0) AND ((largecontent ~~* '%958575%'::text) OR ((content)::text ~~* '%958575%'::text))) Rows Removed by Filter: 19030904 "rows=0" is the telltale. So even after we're past objectid = 1223, that scan continues, because the mergejoin needs to see a higher key before it knows it can stop. That's kind of annoying :-(. I wonder if there's a way to be smarter? This case would work a lot better if the filter conditions were not applied till after the merge; but of course that wouldn't be an improvement in general. Or maybe we should penalize the mergejoin cost estimate if there's a highly selective filter in the way. (It does look like the planner is correctly estimating that the filter is quite selective --- it's just not considering the potential impact on the scan-until-finding-a-greater-key behavior.) Right now I don't have any better suggestion than disabling mergejoin if you think the filter is going to be very selective. regards, tom lane