Re: postgres_fdw: using TABLESAMPLE to collect remote sample

Tomas Vondra <tomas(dot)vondra(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> writes:
> I we want to improve sampling for partitioned cases (where the foreign
> table is just one of many partitions), I think we'd have to rework how
> we determine sample size for each partition. Now we simply calculate
> that from relpages, which seems quite fragile (different amounts of
> bloat, different tuple densities) and somewhat strange for FDW serves
> that don't use the same "page" concept.

> So it may easily happen we determine bogus sample sizes for each
> partition. The difficulties when calculating the sample_frac is just a
> secondary issue.

> OTOH the concept of a "row" seems way more general, so perhaps
> acquire_inherited_sample_rows should use reltuples, and if we want to do
> correction it should happen at this stage already.

Yeah, there's definitely something to be said for changing that to be
based on rowcount estimates instead of physical size. I think it's
a matter for a different patch though, and not a reason to hold up
this one.

regards, tom lane