Hello, I have the following question. Looking at the output of EXPLAIN ANALYZE: 1) I have 2 Index Scans inside a Nested Loop2) Nested Loop's expected rows=12683.1) First Index Scan's expected rows=73.2) Second Index Scan's expected rows=43810 I was living under the impression that a Nested Loop's expected rows are ALWAYS equal to the product of its 2 child nodes, but obviously 7*43810 is far from 1268.What am i missing?
How is the 43810 number estimated - more precisely, does it use the stats for the join condition or it is applied later and it is based only on the additional filters that are part of that index scan? And most importantly how is the 1268 number calculated? Note the second index scan has several filters in addition to the join condition, not sure if relevant but worth mentioning (i already implied it a couple of lines above, but best to say it explicitly i suppose). First table has 11K records, second around 76M. I am not sure how these numbers are estimated and any pointer to a detailed documentation of the EXPLAIN ANALYZE output for each type of node and how they are calculated (especially if includes the exact statistics used etc.) will be greatly appreciated. Without one at the moment i am only guessing, and below is my best guess what is going on. The only way this makes sense to me is if the 43810 row count is estimated only on the additional filters without taking into account the join condition and then in the Nested Loop node statistics about how probably it is the join to succeed are used is applied, because in my case indeed only a very very small fraction (lets say 0.008) of the rows from the first table are referenced in the second one (but that FK is almost never null), so roughly speaking 0.008*(43810*7)=2453 is close enough to 1268. So my main question is: Is what i tried to describe above the algorithm these numbers are estimated? Any details on what exactly statistics are involved in getting the actual probability for the join condition will be much appreciated as well. Thanks,Regards,Nikolay
