Hi all,

There was a bug(??) report about LIKE optimization of
7.0 beta3 in Japan from Akira Imagawa.
It may be difficult to solve. 

Let t_hoge be a table like
{
	hoge_cd int4 primary key,
	shimeinn text,
	tel text,
	..
}
index hoge_ix2 on t_hoge(shimeinn).
index hoge_ix3 on t_hoge(tel).

There are 348236 rows in t_hoge.

For the query
select hoge_cd,shimeinn,tel
 from t_hoge
 where shimeinn like 'imag%'
   and tel like '012%'
 order by hoge_cd
 limit 100;

64 rows returned immediately.

And for the query
select hoge_cd,shimeinn,tel
 from t_hoge
 where shimeinn like 'imag%'
   and tel like '012-3%'
 order by hoge_cd
  limit 100;

24 rows returned after waiting 8 minutes.

I got the following output from him.
explain select * from t_hoge where tel like '012%';
	Index Scan using t_hoge_ix3 on t_hoge  (cost=0.00..0.23 rows=1981
	width=676)

explain select * from t_hoge where tel like '012-3%';
	Index Scan using t_hoge_ix3 on t_hoge  (cost=0.00..0.00 rows=1981
	width=676)

In fact,count(*) is 342323 and 114741 respectively.

The first problem is that estimated cost is too low.
It seems that the index selectivity of '012-3%' = the index
selectivity of '012%' / (256*256),right ? 
If so,does it give more practical estimation than before ?
It doesn't correspond to rows information either.

In reality, * shimeinn like 'imag%' * is much more restrictive
than * tel like '012-3%' *.  However I couldn't think of the
way to foresee which is more restrictive. Now I doubt whether
we have enough information to estimate LIKE selectivity
correctly. It's the second problem.

Comments ? 

Regards.

Hiroshi Inoue
Inoue(at)tpf(dot)co(dot)jp

Responses

• Re: 7.0 like selectivity at 2000-04-06 15:29:28 from Tom Lane

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