Re: Query never completes with low work_mem (at least not within one hour)

>> I have set work_mem to a very low value intentionally for demonstration
>> purposes:
>>
>> postgres=# show work_mem;
>> work_mem
>> ----------
>> 16MB
>> (1 row)
>>
>> postgres=# show shared_buffers ;
>> shared_buffers
>> ----------------
>> 128MB
>> (1 row)
>>
>>
>> When I run the following query ( I know that "not in" is not a good choice
>> here ):
>>
>> postgres=# select count(user_id) from users where user_id not in ( select id
>> from ids);

>"NOT IN" where the predate is a table column can lead to very poor
>query plans especially where the haystack is not provably known (at
>plan time) to contain only not null values. By reducing work_mem, the
>server has decided has to repeatedly search the table to search for
>the presence of null values. Try converting the query to NOT EXISTS.

Thank you, Merlin. As said I know that "not in" is not a good choice in this case but I still do not get what is going here. Why does the server repeatedly search for NULL values when I decrease work_mem and why not when increasing work_mem?

Regards
Daniel