Re: full outer performance problem

Hi Bruno,

Thanks for the moral support! I feel so too - but I am confident it will
show up soon.

W.r.t. your rewrite of the query, I get this "ERROR:  could not devise a
query plan for the given query" but no further details - I will try google

Regards,
Kim.

Bruno Wolff III wrote:

>On Wed, Jun 08, 2005 at 11:37:40 +0200,
>  Kim Bisgaard <kib+pg@dmi.dk> wrote:
>
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>I'm having problems with the query optimizer and FULL OUTER JOIN on
>>PostgreSQL 7.4. I cannot get it to use my indexes with full outer joins.
>>I might be naive, but I think that it should be possible?
>>
>>I have two BIG tables (virtually identical) with 3 NOT NULL columns
>>Station_id, TimeObs, Temp_XXXX, with unique indexes on (Station_id,
>>TimeObs) and valid ANALYSE (set statistics=100). I want to join the two
>>tables with a FULL OUTER JOIN.
>>
>>When I specify the query as:
>>
>>SELECT station_id, timeobs,temp_grass, temp_dry_at_2m
>>       FROM temp_dry_at_2m a
>>       FULL OUTER JOIN temp_grass b
>>       USING (station_id, timeobs)
>>       WHERE station_id = 52981
>>         AND timeobs = '2004-1-1 0:0:0'
>>
>>I get the correct results
>>
>>station_id |       timeobs       | temp_grass | temp_dry_at_2m
>>------------+---------------------+------------+----------------
>>     52944 | 2004-01-01 00:10:00 |            |           -1.1
>>(1 row)
>>
>>BUT LOUSY performance, and the following EXPLAIN:
>>
>>                                                                                 QUERY PLAN

>>------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>Merge Full Join  (cost=1542369.83..1618958.58 rows=6956994 width=32)
>>(actual time=187176.408..201436.264 rows=1 loops=1)
>>  Merge Cond: (("outer".station_id = "inner".station_id) AND
>>  ("outer".timeobs = "inner".timeobs))
>>  Filter: ((COALESCE("outer".station_id, "inner".station_id) = 52981) AND
>>  (COALESCE("outer".timeobs, "inner".timeobs) = '2004-01-01
>>  00:00:00'::timestamp without time zone))
>>  ->  Sort  (cost=1207913.44..1225305.93 rows=6956994 width=16) (actual
>>  time=145748.253..153851.607 rows=6956994 loops=1)
>>        Sort Key: a.station_id, a.timeobs
>>        ->  Seq Scan on temp_dry_at_2m a  (cost=0.00..117549.94
>>        rows=6956994 width=16) (actual time=0.049..54226.770 rows=6956994
>>        loops=1)
>>  ->  Sort  (cost=334456.38..340472.11 rows=2406292 width=16) (actual
>>  time=31668.876..34491.123 rows=2406292 loops=1)
>>        Sort Key: b.station_id, b.timeobs
>>        ->  Seq Scan on temp_grass b  (cost=0.00..40658.92 rows=2406292
>>        width=16) (actual time=0.052..5484.489 rows=2406292 loops=1)
>>Total runtime: 201795.989 ms
>>(10 rows)
>>
>>
>
>Someone else will need to comment on why Postgres can't use a more
>efficient plan. What I think will work for you is to restrict
>the station_id and timeobs on each side and then do a full join.
>You can try something like the sample query below (which hasn't been tested):
>SELECT station_id, timeobs, temp_grass, temp_dry_at_2m
>  FROM
>    (SELECT station_id, timeobs, temp_dry_at_2m
>      FROM temp_dry_at_2m
>      WHERE
>        station_id = 52981
>        AND
>        timeobs = '2004-1-1 0:0:0') a
>    FULL OUTER JOIN
>    (SELECT station_id, timeobs, temp_grass
>      FROM temp_grass
>      WHERE
>        station_id = 52981
>        AND
>        timeobs = '2004-1-1 0:0:0') b
>    USING (station_id, timeobs)
>
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