Different Choices For Index/Sequential Scan With And Without A Join In 7.2

Dear List,

I have been doing a little investigation on when the optimizer chooses a
sequential scan over an index access. I have come accross what interesting
behaviour in the current 7.2 sources ( 2001-08-17):

The consider two types of query on my "usual" tables :

SELECT
f.d0key,
count(f.val)
FROM fact0 f
WHERE f.d0key BETWEEN 270 AND <integer>
GROUP BY f.d0key;

and

SELECT
d0.f1,
count(f.val)
FROM dim0 d0,
fact0 f
WHERE d0.d0key = f.d0key
AND d0.f1 BETWEEN '2000-01-26' AND <'date'>
GROUP BY d0.f1;

Note that 'f1' = '2000-01-26' corrosponds to 'd0key' = 270 in the table
'dim0';

I wanted to find the values for <integer> and <date> for which the optimizer
changed from and index acess to a seq scan of the 'fact0' table.

I used cpu_tuple_cost = 0.4, but everything else was fairly standard.

For the first query the value of <integer> ( i.e : 'd0key' ) was 627
For the second the value of <date> (i.e 'f1' ) was '2000-02-05' (
corrosponds to d0key = 279 )

It guess I was expecting the value that made the first query change from
index to seq scan to be "close" to the value that made the second query use a
sequential scan....as the fact0 access of the second query is essentially the
first query. However the results are vastly different - have I missed
something obvious here ?

The script and explain output are listed below.

regards

Mark

<--script
--------------------------------------------------------------------
SET cpu_tuple_cost=0.4;
SHOW cpu_tuple_cost;

-- show what keys are for what dates...
--
SELECT d0.d0key,
d0.f1
FROM dim0 d0
WHERE d0.d0key IN ('270','279','280','626','627')
;

-- show when index scans change to sequential
-- for the fact0 table alone...
--
EXPLAIN
SELECT
f.d0key,
count(f.val)
FROM fact0 f
WHERE f.d0key BETWEEN 270 AND 626
GROUP BY f.d0key
;

EXPLAIN
SELECT
f.d0key,
count(f.val)
FROM fact0 f
WHERE f.d0key BETWEEN 270 AND 627
GROUP BY f.d0key
;

-- show when index scans change to sequential
-- for the two table join
--EXPLAIN
SELECT
d0.f1,
count(f.val)
FROM dim0 d0,
fact0 f
WHERE d0.d0key = f.d0key
AND d0.f1 BETWEEN '2000-01-26' AND '2000-02-04'
GROUP BY d0.f1
;

EXPLAIN
SELECT
d0.f1,
count(f.val)
FROM dim0 d0,
fact0 f
WHERE d0.d0key = f.d0key
AND d0.f1 BETWEEN '2000-01-26' AND '2000-02-05'
GROUP BY d0.f1
;

<--results
--------------------------------------------------------------------
SET VARIABLE
NOTICE: cpu_tuple_cost is 0.4
SHOW VARIABLE
d0key | f1
-------+------------------------
270 | 2000-01-26 00:00:00+13
279 | 2000-02-04 00:00:00+13
280 | 2000-02-05 00:00:00+13
626 | 2001-01-16 00:00:00+13
627 | 2001-01-17 00:00:00+13
(5 rows)

NOTICE: QUERY PLAN:

Aggregate (cost=0.00..1308177.10 rows=33453 width=8)
-> Group (cost=0.00..1307340.77 rows=334533 width=8)
-> Index Scan using fact0_pk on fact0 f (cost=0.00..1306504.44
rows=334533 width=8)

EXPLAIN
NOTICE: QUERY PLAN:

Aggregate (cost=1308030.21..1309707.21 rows=33540 width=8)
-> Group (cost=1308030.21..1308868.71 rows=335400 width=8)
-> Sort (cost=1308030.21..1308030.21 rows=335400 width=8)
-> Seq Scan on fact0 f (cost=0.00..1272693.00 rows=335400
width=8)

EXPLAIN
NOTICE: QUERY PLAN:

Aggregate (cost=0.00..1155870.07 rows=268 width=20)
-> Group (cost=0.00..1155863.36 rows=2684 width=20)
-> Nested Loop (cost=0.00..1155856.65 rows=2684 width=20)
-> Index Scan using dim0_q1 on dim0 d0 (cost=0.00..6.63
rows=9 width=12)
-> Index Scan using fact0_pk on fact0 f (cost=0.00..117117.99
rows=30000 width=8)

EXPLAIN
NOTICE: QUERY PLAN:

Aggregate (cost=1281572.52..1281587.43 rows=298 width=20)
-> Group (cost=1281572.52..1281579.97 rows=2982 width=20)
-> Sort (cost=1281572.52..1281572.52 rows=2982 width=20)
-> Hash Join (cost=7.06..1281400.41 rows=2982 width=20)
-> Seq Scan on fact0 f (cost=0.00..1257693.00
rows=3000000 width=8)
-> Hash (cost=7.04..7.04 rows=10 width=12)
-> Index Scan using dim0_q1 on dim0 d0
(cost=0.00..7.04 rows=10 width=12)

EXPLAIN