Re: Implement missing join selectivity estimation for range types

Hi Tomas,

As a quick update, the paper related to this work has finally been published in Mathematics (https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/11/6/1383).
During revision we also added a figure showing a comparison of our algorithm vs the existing algorithms in Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL and PostgreSQL, which can be found in the experiments section of the paper.
As can be seen, our algorithm outperforms even Oracle and SQL Server.

During this revision we also found a small bug, so we are working on a revision of the patch, which fixes this.

Also, calc_hist_selectivity_contains in multirangetypes_selfuncs.c needs
a proper comment, not just "this is a copy from rangetypes".

Right, the comment should elaborate more that the collected statistics are
currently that same as rangetypes but may potentially deviate.

However, it seems the two functions are exactly the same. Would the
functions diverge in the future? If not, maybe there should be just a
single shared function?

Indeed, it is possible that the two functions will deviate if that statistics
of multirange types will be refined.

Right, but are there any such plans? Also, what's the likelihood we'll
add new statistics to only one of the places (e.g. for multiranges but
not plain ranges)?

I'd keep a single function until we actually need two. That's also
easier for maintenance - with two it's easy to fix a bug in one place
and forget about the other, etc.

Regarding our previous discussion about the duplication of calc_hist_join_selectivity in rangetypes_selfuncs.c and multirangetypes_selfuncs.c, we can also remove this duplication in the revision if needed.
Note that currently, there are no external functions shared between rangetypes_selfuncs.c and multirangetypes_selfuncs.c.
Any function that was used in both files was duplicated as a static function.
The functions calc_hist_selectivity_scalar, calc_length_hist_frac, calc_hist_selectivity_contained and calc_hist_selectivity_contains are examples of this, where the function is identical but has been declared static in both files.
That said, we can remove the duplication of calc_hist_join_selectivity if it still needed.
We would, however, require some guidance as to where to put the external definition of this function, as there does not appear to be a rangetypes_selfuncs.h header.
Should it simply go into utils/selfuncs.h or should we create a new header file?

Best regards,
Maxime Schoemans