--- On Fri, 12/2/11, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> The only real fix for that will require cross-column
> statistics, which
> we don't have yet --- without such, there's no way for the
> planner to
> know that distributors have an atypical number of child
> customers.
The only caveat that I can think of here is that each of the customer_id's in the subselect ARE in the MCV list for the parent_customer column for that customer_rel table. If I had listed SPECIFIC customer ids in the subselect, I would get spot-on row estimates. Is there anything there that gives me any hope?