RE: Function search_path

>> I have played around with the postgres memory settings and setting search_path on a function causes a lot more memory to be used than if no search_path was set.
>
>That's a pretty broad claim with a pretty small amount of evidence offered.
>
>I can certainly believe that attaching a SET clause (whether for search_path or any other GUC variable) would have an efficiency impact; one non-obvious example is that it prevents inlining if the function is a SQL function. But I don't immediately see a reason for major memory consumption from that. I suspect what you're seeing is specific to a particular use-case. If you were to provide a concrete example, we could look into what's happening.
>
>regards, tom lane

Here is an example where I can show significant extra memory consumption when setting search_path on a function:

CREATE TABLE test_search_path(date_last_modified timestamp, last_name varchar);

--populate 1,000,000 rows with random values from 1,000 surnames for 'SURNAME'
INSERT INTO test_search_path(date_last_modified, last_name) VALUES(clock_timestamp(), 'SURNAME');

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION clean_name_upper(original_name varchar)
RETURNS varchar
LANGUAGE plpgsql
AS $$
BEGIN
RETURN trim(upper(original_name));
END;
$$ IMMUTABLE STRICT;

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION split_name_on_hyphen(original_name character varying)
RETURNS text[]
LANGUAGE plpgsql
AS $$
BEGIN
RETURN string_to_array(clean_name_upper(original_name), '-');
END;
$$ IMMUTABLE STRICT SET search_path = '$user';

CREATE INDEX idx_test_search_path_clean_name_upper_last_name ON test_search_path (clean_name_upper(last_name));
CREATE INDEX idx_test_search_path_split_name_on_hyphen_last_name ON test_search_path USING gin(split_name_on_hyphen(last_name));

UPDATE test_search_path SET date_last_modified = (date_last_modified - interval '7 days');

This only seems to be an issue when indices exist for both functions and when the inner called function does not have search_path set.

Thanks,
Manfred

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