Re: Performance issue with 8.2.3 - "C" application

Karl Denninger <karl(at)denninger(dot)net> writes:
> But.... here's the query that has a habit of taking the most time....

> select forum, * from post where toppost = 1 and (replied > (select
> lastview from forumlog where login='theuser' and forum=post.forum and
> number is null)) is not false AND (replied > (select lastview from
> forumlog where login='theuser' and forum=post.forum and
> number=post.number)) is not f
> alse order by pinned desc, replied desc offset 0 limit 20

Did that ever perform well for you? It's the sub-selects that are
likely to hurt ... in particular,

> -> Index Scan using post_top on post (cost=0.00..57266.37
> rows=113 width=757)
> Index Cond: (toppost = 1)
> Filter: (((replied > (subplan)) IS NOT FALSE) AND
> ((replied > (subplan)) IS NOT FALSE))

versus

> Index Scan using post_top on post (cost=0.00..632.03 rows=1013 width=11)
> Index Cond: (toppost = 1)

The planner thinks that the two subplan filter conditions will eliminate
about 90% of the rows returned by the bare indexscan (IIRC this is
purely a rule of thumb, not based on any statistics) and that testing
them 1013 times will add over 50000 cost units to the basic indexscan.
That part I believe --- correlated subqueries are expensive.

regards, tom lane