Re: lost records --- problem identified!

Ah, the reason I couldn't see the problem is I was using the wrong
query. I happened to look at the 'test' file you had sitting there
and saw that it was a join against one more table than I was using;
there wasn't anything about the 'stock' table in the query you'd sent
by mail.

Once I had the right query I was able to replicate the problem here.
It's a planning bug. A simplified version is:

create table t1 (f1 int, f2 int);
create table t2 (f3 int, f4 int);
insert into t1 values(1,10);
insert into t1 values(2,9);
insert into t1 values(3,8);
insert into t1 values(4,7);
insert into t1 values(3,3);
insert into t1 values(3,0);
insert into t1 values(10,0);
insert into t1 values(10,-1);
insert into t2 values(1,1);
insert into t2 values(3,3);
insert into t2 values(2,2);
select * from t1,t2 where f2 = f3 and f1 = f3;

This should produce one row (of 3's), but will not unless you set
enable_mergejoin to OFF. The problem is that the produced plan
is basically

Merge Join using "f3 = f1 and f3 = f2"
-> Sort by f3
-> Seq Scan on t2
-> Sort by f2
-> Seq Scan on t1

The system knows enough to realize that all the valid output rows
will have f1 = f2 by transitivity, but unfortunately it's then
concluding that it's OK to sort t1 by f2 instead of f1, which is
NOT OK in terms of the ordering the merge needs --- the merge expects
major order by f1 and will miss records if that's not correct.

I think the proper fix is to gin up an actual WHERE clause "f1 = f2"
and apply it to restrict the output of the seqscan on t1. Then the
output of the sort will indeed have the expected ordering, ie, f1 or f2
interchangeably. (Actually, the extra WHERE clause might well cause
a different plan to be chosen, because it will give the
restriction-selectivity code information it didn't have before.
But assuming the same plan structure it will work rather than fail.)

This is a new bug in 7.0.* --- earlier versions didn't have it because
they had no concept of transitive closure of sort keys. Oh well, live
and learn.

I will work on fixing this in current sources and then see if it's
practical to back-patch it into 7.0.*. In the meantime, I recommend
patching your queries by hand such that all the implied equalities
are mentioned explicitly. That is, instead of

part_info.item_num = po_line_item.item_num and
parts.item_num = po_line_item.item_num and
stock.item_num = parts.item_num and

you'd need something like

part_info.item_num = po_line_item.item_num and
part_info.item_num = parts.item_num and
part_info.item_num = stock.item_num and
parts.item_num = po_line_item.item_num and
stock.item_num = parts.item_num and
stock.item_num = po_line_item.item_num and

Ugh :-(. Another possibility is "set enable_mergejoin to off" ...
as far as I know, only mergejoin is sufficiently dependent on input
ordering to be bitten by this problem.

regards, tom lane