Discarding the resulting rows

Started by Murali M. Krishnaover 15 years ago8 messages
#1Murali M. Krishna
murali1729@yahoo.com

Hello Hackers:

Two questions.

1.

I would like to execute queries such as

select * from part and time the query. But I want to ignore how much time is taken for printing the result to a file or the screen.

Basically, I would like to discard the result rows after doing all the work required to execute the query.

I looked at the documentation and I saw something about using the keyword PERFORM rather than SELECT.

I tried PERFORM * from part;

But this gave me a syntax error.

Please let me know how this can be done.

2.

How do I clear the buffer caches between two query runs?
I believe this is not possible in Postgres. Can someone please confirm this or tell me how it may be done.

Thanks,

Murali.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Please visit NumberFest.com for educational number puzzles & mind exercises for all ages! And please tell your friends about it. Thank You!

#2Kevin Grittner
Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov
In reply to: Murali M. Krishna (#1)
Re: Discarding the resulting rows

"Murali M. Krishna" <murali1729@yahoo.com> wrote:

Basically, I would like to discard the result rows after doing all
the work required to execute the query.

I would use EXPLAIN ANALYZE SELECT ...

I looked at the documentation and I saw something about using the
keyword PERFORM rather than SELECT.

I don't remember ever seeing anything like that. Do you have a URL?

How do I clear the buffer caches between two query runs?

The easiest way to clear the PostgreSQL cache is to restart the
service. PostgreSQL goes through the OS cache; so you'll need to
clear that, too. How you do that is dependent on your OS. Of
course, in most real use cases, a significant portion of the
database would be cached, so unless you're dealing with a very
unusual situation, it's hard to see what the value would be of such
a benchmark, unless you're trying to create an artificial "worst
case" scenario for bounding purposes.

Oh, and most serious database servers have 256MB or more of battery
backed cache on the RAID controller; don't forget to deal with that
somehow.

-Kevin

#3Jaime Casanova
jcasanov@systemguards.com.ec
In reply to: Kevin Grittner (#2)
Re: Discarding the resulting rows

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 2:36 PM, Kevin Grittner
<Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:

"Murali M. Krishna" <murali1729@yahoo.com> wrote:

I looked at the documentation and I saw something about using the
keyword PERFORM rather than SELECT.

I don't remember ever seeing anything like that.  Do you have a URL?

i guess he is refering to the plpgsql's PERFORM statement, which of
course he can't use outside a plpgsql function...
mmm... well, IIRC, in 9.0 he will be able to do DO $$ PERFORM * FROM
tabla; $$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

but i think DO is not an EXPLAINing statement

--
Atentamente,
Jaime Casanova
Soporte y capacitación de PostgreSQL
Asesoría y desarrollo de sistemas
Guayaquil - Ecuador
Cel. +59387171157

#4Robert Haas
robertmhaas@gmail.com
In reply to: Kevin Grittner (#2)
Re: Discarding the resulting rows

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 3:36 PM, Kevin Grittner
<Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:

"Murali M. Krishna" <murali1729@yahoo.com> wrote:

Basically, I would like to discard the result rows after doing all
the work required to execute the query.

I would use EXPLAIN ANALYZE SELECT ...

There's some overhead to that, of course.

....Robert

#5Jaime Casanova
jcasanov@systemguards.com.ec
In reply to: Robert Haas (#4)
Re: Discarding the resulting rows

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 3:03 PM, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 3:36 PM, Kevin Grittner
<Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:

"Murali M. Krishna" <murali1729@yahoo.com> wrote:

Basically, I would like to discard the result rows after doing all
the work required to execute the query.

I would use EXPLAIN ANALYZE SELECT ...

There's some overhead to that, of course.

he could see the "actual time" in the very first row of the EXPLAIN
ANALYZE... isn't that a value that is more close to what the OP is
looking for?

--
Atentamente,
Jaime Casanova
Soporte y capacitación de PostgreSQL
Asesoría y desarrollo de sistemas
Guayaquil - Ecuador
Cel. +59387171157

#6Kevin Grittner
Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov
In reply to: Robert Haas (#4)
Re: Discarding the resulting rows

Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 3:36 PM, Kevin Grittner
<Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:

"Murali M. Krishna" <murali1729@yahoo.com> wrote:

Basically, I would like to discard the result rows after doing
all the work required to execute the query.

I would use EXPLAIN ANALYZE SELECT ...

There's some overhead to that, of course.

Good point. At the moment I can't think how to do better, though.

Other suggestions, anyone?

-Kevin

#7Tom Lane
tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
In reply to: Jaime Casanova (#5)
Re: Discarding the resulting rows

Jaime Casanova <jcasanov@systemguards.com.ec> writes:

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 3:03 PM, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 3:36 PM, Kevin Grittner
<Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:

I would use EXPLAIN ANALYZE SELECT ...

There's some overhead to that, of course.

he could see the "actual time" in the very first row of the EXPLAIN
ANALYZE... isn't that a value that is more close to what the OP is
looking for?

Well, it will include the instrumentation overhead of EXPLAIN ANALYZE,
which can be nontrivial depending on your hardware and the query plan.

On the other hand, EXPLAIN skips the cost of converting the result data
to text form, not to mention the network overhead of delivering it; so
in another sense it's underestimating the work involved.

I guess the real question is exactly what the OP is hoping to measure
and why.

regards, tom lane

#8Murali M. Krishna
murali1729@yahoo.com
In reply to: Tom Lane (#7)
Re: Discarding the resulting rows

Hello All:

The optimizer assumes that data is disk resident when computing the cost of a query plan.
I am trying to ascertain what the correlation is between times and costs of some benchmark queries to see how good the cost model is.

Since I have more than 100 queries, it would be painful to stop and start the server each time to force all the buffer pages out. Also, some of these queries have large number of result rows. I don't want the time to be skewed by the output time.

Cheers,

Murali.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Please visit NumberFest.com for educational number puzzles & mind exercises for all ages! And please tell your friends about it. Thank You!

--- On Mon, 4/26/10, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Discarding the resulting rows
To: "Jaime Casanova" <jcasanov@systemguards.com.ec>
Cc: "Robert Haas" <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, "Kevin Grittner" <Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov>, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org, "Murali M. Krishna" <murali1729@yahoo.com>
Date: Monday, April 26, 2010, 1:25 PM

Jaime Casanova <jcasanov@systemguards.com.ec> writes:

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 3:03 PM, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 3:36 PM, Kevin Grittner
<Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:

I would use EXPLAIN ANALYZE SELECT ...

There's some overhead to that, of course.

he could see the "actual time" in the very first row of the EXPLAIN
ANALYZE... isn't that a value that is more close to what the OP is
looking for?

Well, it will include the instrumentation overhead of EXPLAIN ANALYZE,
which can be nontrivial depending on your hardware and the query plan.

On the other hand, EXPLAIN skips the cost of converting the result data
to text form, not to mention the network overhead of delivering it; so
in another sense it's underestimating the work involved.

I guess the real question is exactly what the OP is hoping to measure
and why.

            regards, tom lane

--
Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers