Re: Very slow INFORMATION_SCHEMA

Mario Weilguni <mweilguni(at)sime(dot)com> writes:
> I can confirm this for a quite larger result set (4020 rows) for a DB
> with 410 tables and a lot of foreign key constraints.
> ...
> This is Postgresql 8.2.4, on a Dual-Core XEON 3.6GHz. With nested_loops
> off, I get a very fast response (330ms).

FWIW, it looks like 8.3 is significantly smarter about this example
--- it's able to push the toplevel conditions on CONSTRAINT_SCHEMA
and CONSTRAINT_TYPE down inside the UNION, where 8.2 fails to do so.

Which is not to say that there's not more left to do on optimizing
the information_schema views. In this particular case, for example,
I wonder why the UNION in INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_CONSTRAINTS isn't a
UNION ALL. There's probably a lot more such micro-optimizations that
could be done if anyone was motivated to look at it.

regards, tom lane