d2d8a229bc
Incremental Sort is an optimized variant of multikey sort for cases when the input is already sorted by a prefix of the requested sort keys. For example when the relation is already sorted by (key1, key2) and we need to sort it by (key1, key2, key3) we can simply split the input rows into groups having equal values in (key1, key2), and only sort/compare the remaining column key3. This has a number of benefits: - Reduced memory consumption, because only a single group (determined by values in the sorted prefix) needs to be kept in memory. This may also eliminate the need to spill to disk. - Lower startup cost, because Incremental Sort produce results after each prefix group, which is beneficial for plans where startup cost matters (like for example queries with LIMIT clause). We consider both Sort and Incremental Sort, and decide based on costing. The implemented algorithm operates in two different modes: - Fetching a minimum number of tuples without check of equality on the prefix keys, and sorting on all columns when safe. - Fetching all tuples for a single prefix group and then sorting by comparing only the remaining (non-prefix) keys. We always start in the first mode, and employ a heuristic to switch into the second mode if we believe it's beneficial - the goal is to minimize the number of unnecessary comparions while keeping memory consumption below work_mem. This is a very old patch series. The idea was originally proposed by Alexander Korotkov back in 2013, and then revived in 2017. In 2018 the patch was taken over by James Coleman, who wrote and rewrote most of the current code. There were many reviewers/contributors since 2013 - I've done my best to pick the most active ones, and listed them in this commit message. Author: James Coleman, Alexander Korotkov Reviewed-by: Tomas Vondra, Andreas Karlsson, Marti Raudsepp, Peter Geoghegan, Robert Haas, Thomas Munro, Antonin Houska, Andres Freund, Alexander Kuzmenkov Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAPpHfdscOX5an71nHd8WSUH6GNOCf=V7wgDaTXdDd9=goN-gfA@mail.gmail.com Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAPpHfds1waRZ=NOmueYq0sx1ZSCnt+5QJvizT8ndT2=etZEeAQ@mail.gmail.com
PostgreSQL Database Management System ===================================== This directory contains the source code distribution of the PostgreSQL database management system. PostgreSQL is an advanced object-relational database management system that supports an extended subset of the SQL standard, including transactions, foreign keys, subqueries, triggers, user-defined types and functions. This distribution also contains C language bindings. PostgreSQL has many language interfaces, many of which are listed here: https://www.postgresql.org/download/ See the file INSTALL for instructions on how to build and install PostgreSQL. That file also lists supported operating systems and hardware platforms and contains information regarding any other software packages that are required to build or run the PostgreSQL system. Copyright and license information can be found in the file COPYRIGHT. A comprehensive documentation set is included in this distribution; it can be read as described in the installation instructions. The latest version of this software may be obtained at https://www.postgresql.org/download/. For more information look at our web site located at https://www.postgresql.org/.