EXPLAIN and HashAggregate

Started by Stefan Kaltenbrunneralmost 20 years ago2 messages
#1Stefan Kaltenbrunner
stefan@kaltenbrunner.cc

While playing around with large work_mem(or in that case a bit insane)
and maintenance_work_mem settings I noticed that EXPLAIN behaves quite
weird:

foo=# set work_mem to 200000;
SET
Time: 0.187 ms
foo=# explain select count(*) from testtable2 group by a;
QUERY PLAN

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
GroupAggregate (cost=8845616.04..9731787.89 rows=37349188 width=4)
-> Sort (cost=8845616.04..8985385.04 rows=55907600 width=4)
Sort Key: a
-> Seq Scan on testtable2 (cost=0.00..1088488.00
rows=55907600 width=
4)
(4 rows)

Time: 0.364 ms
foo=# set work_mem to 2500000;
SET
Time: 0.195 ms
foo=# explain select count(*) from testtable2 group by a;
QUERY PLAN

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
HashAggregate (cost=1368026.00..1834890.85 rows=37349188 width=4)
-> Seq Scan on testtable2 (cost=0.00..1088488.00 rows=55907600 width=4)
(2 rows)

Time: 615.108 ms

it looks like that postgresql is actually allocating the memory for the
hashtable of the HashAggregate which is a bit unexpected for a plain
EXPLAIN.

Stefan

#2Tom Lane
tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
In reply to: Stefan Kaltenbrunner (#1)
Re: EXPLAIN and HashAggregate

Stefan Kaltenbrunner <stefan@kaltenbrunner.cc> writes:

it looks like that postgresql is actually allocating the memory for the
hashtable of the HashAggregate which is a bit unexpected for a plain
EXPLAIN.

Not really. EXPLAIN runs plan setup (ExecutorStart).

regards, tom lane