"Kevin Grittner" <Kevin(dot)Grittner(at)wicourts(dot)gov> writes:
> Since you were so confident it couldn't be the outer join, I went
> looking for what else I changed at the same time. I eliminated the code
> referencing that table, which contained an OR. I've seen ORs cause
> nasty problems with optimizers in the past. I took out the OR in the
> where clause, without eliminating that last outer join, and it optimized
> fine.
I don't think that OR is relevant either, since again it's present in
both the well-optimized and badly-optimized variants that you posted.
regards, tom lane