Re: Unnecessary buffer usage with multicolumn index, row comparison, and equility constraint

On Fri, May 10, 2024 at 11:28 PM WU Yan <4wuyan(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> Hi everyone, first time here. Please kindly let me know if this is not the
> right place to ask.
>
> I notice a simple query can read a lot of buffer blocks in a meaningless
> way, when
> 1. there is an index scan on a multicolumn index
> 2. there is row constructor comparison in the Index Cond
> 3. there is also an equality constraint on the leftmost column of the
> multicolumn index
>
>
> ## How to reproduce
>
> I initially noticed it on AWS Aurora RDS, but it can be reproduced in
> docker container as well.
> ```bash
> docker run --name test-postgres -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=mysecretpassword -d
> -p 5432:5432 postgres:16.3
> ```
>
> Create a table with a multicolumn index. Populate 12 million rows with
> random integers.
> ```sql
> CREATE TABLE t(a int, b int);
> CREATE INDEX my_idx ON t USING BTREE (a, b);
>
> INSERT INTO t(a, b)
> SELECT
> (random() * 123456)::int AS a,
> (random() * 123456)::int AS b
> FROM
> generate_series(1, 12345678);
>
> ANALYZE t;
> ```
>
> Simple query that uses the multicolumn index.
> ```
> postgres=# explain (analyze, buffers) select * from t where row(a, b) >
> row(123450, 123450) and a = 0 order by a, b;
>

Out of curiosity, why "where row(a, b) > row(123450, 123450)" instead of "where
a > 123450 and b > 123450"?