Re: Why not do distinct before SetOp

David Rowley <dgrowleyml(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> On Tue, 5 Nov 2024 at 04:18, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>> A different idea that occurred to me while looking at this is:
>> why have we got all this machinery to add and check a flag
>> column, rather than arranging things so that the two input
>> relations are "outer" and "inner" children of the SetOp?

> I've no idea why it's not like that. The current design is quite
> strange and feels dated. It might be worth making that change as even
> if we gave joins better support for IS NOT DISTINCT FROM and made
> INTERSECT use INNER JOIN instead and EXCEPT use anti join, we'd still
> need nodeSetOp.c for INTERSECT ALL and EXCEPT ALL.

Yeah. We'd still need it, and besides which it seems like a fairly
small project, unlike the other thing which could take multiple
years to get to an acceptable state.

Of course, I might be overestimating the performance benefit we'd get.
But I'm tempted to give it a try.

regards, tom lane