Re: Talking about optimizer, my long dream

On 04 Feb, 2011,at 02:56 PM, Mladen Gogala <mladen(dot)gogala(at)vmsinfo(dot)com> wrote:

> Віталій Тимчишин wrote:
> > Hi, all.
> >
> > All this optimizer vs hint thread
> There is no "optimizer vs. hint". Hints are a necessary part of the
> optimizer in all other databases.

That has nothing to do with PostgreSQL: PostgreSQL = PostgreSQL. And it doesn't have hints and everybody knows it.
> Without hints Postgres will not get
> used in the company that I work for, period.

That's up to you, that's fine. But why did you start with PostgreSQL in the first place? You knew PostgreSQL doesn't have hints and the wiki told you hints are not wanted as well. When hints are an essential requirement for your company, you should pick another product, EnterpriseDB Postgres Plus for example.
> I was willing to wait but
> the fatwa against hints seems unyielding,

There is no fatwa. The PostgreSQL project prefers to spend resources on a better optimizer to solve the real problems, not on hints for working around the problems. That has nothing to do with any fatwa or religion.
> so that's it. I am even
> inclined to believe that deep down under the hood, this fatwa has an
> ulterior motive, which disgusts me deeply. With hints, there would be
> far fewer consulting gigs.

The consulting guys are the ones who love hints: They know they have to come back the other month because the old hint does more harm than good when data changes. And data will change over time.

You said it's so simple to implement hints in PostgreSQL, so please, show us. Or ask/pay somebody to write this simple code for you to support hints, nobody will ever stop you from doing that. When you have a use case that proves the usage of hints will improve the performance of PostgreSQL and you have some code that can be maintained by the PostgreSQL project, it might be implemented in the contrib or even core. It's up to you, not somebody else.
>
>
> Mladen Gogala
> Sr. Oracle DBA
> 1500 Broadway
> New York, NY 10036
> (212) 329-5251
> www.vmsinfo.com
>
>
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