On 25/05/10 16:43, Mark Kirkwood wrote:
Today I ran into some interesting consequences of the xml data type being without an "=" operator. One I thought I'd post here because it has a *possible* planner impact. I'm not sure it is actually a bug as such, but this seemed the best forum to post in initially:

test=# \d bug
      Table "public.bug"
 Column |  Type   | Modifiers
--------+---------+-----------
 id     | integer |
 val    | xml     |

test=# explain select val::text from bug;
                          QUERY PLAN
--------------------------------------------------------------
 Seq Scan on bug  (cost=0.00..58127.78 rows=1000278 width=32)


Note the width estimate. However a more realistic estimate for width is:

test=# select 8192/(reltuples/relpages) as width from pg_class where relname='bug';
      width
------------------
 394.130431739976

So we are going to massively underestimate the "size" of such a dataset. Now this appears to be a consequence of no "=" operator (std_typanalyze in analyze.c bails if there isn't one), so the planner has no idea about how wide 'val' actually is. I'm wondering if it is worth having at least an "=" operator to enable some minimal stats to be available for xml columns.


Adding a minimal = op (see attached) and an analyze results in:

test=# explain select val::text from bug;
                          QUERY PLAN
---------------------------------------------------------------
 Seq Scan on bug  (cost=0.00..62632.08 rows=1000008 width=385)

which gives a much better indication of dataset size.

-- Add support for a minimal = operator for xml type.
CREATE FUNCTION xmleq(xml, xml)
    RETURNS bool
    AS  'texteq'
    LANGUAGE INTERNAL IMMUTABLE STRICT;

CREATE OPERATOR = (
    leftarg = xml,
    rightarg = xml,
    procedure = xmleq,
    commutator = =
);

-- Add class so analyze populates pg_statistic.
CREATE OPERATOR CLASS xml_ops
	DEFAULT FOR TYPE xml USING hash AS
		OPERATOR        1       =;
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