Re: RFC: planner statistics in 7.2

At 22:27 19/04/01 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
>Philip Warner <pjw(at)rhyme(dot)com(dot)au> writes:
>> At 21:14 19/04/01 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> But you don't really need to look at the index (if it even exists
>>> at the time you do the ANALYZE). The extent to which the data is
>>> ordered in the table is a property of the table, not the index.
>
>> But the value (and cost) of using a specific index in an indexscan depends
>> on that index (or am I missing something?).
>
>All that we're discussing here is one specific parameter in the cost
>estimation for an indexscan, viz, the extent to which the table ordering
>agrees with the index ordering.

This does not necessarily follow. A table ordering need not follow the sort
order of an index for the index to have a low indexscan cost. All that is
required is that most of the rows referred to by an index node must reside
in a page or pages that will be read by one IO. eg. a table that has a
sequence based ID, with, say 20% of rows updated, will work nicely with an
indexscan on the ID, even though it has never been clustered.

What I'm suggesting is that if you look at a random sample of index nodes,
you should be able to get a statistically valid estimate of the 'clumping'
of the data pointed to by the index.

Am I still missing the point?

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