Re: GIN improvements part2: fast scan

On 28.1.2014 08:29, Heikki Linnakangas wrote:
> On 01/28/2014 05:54 AM, Tomas Vondra wrote:
>> Then I ran those scripts on:
>>
>> * 9.3
>> * 9.4 with Heikki's patches (9.4-heikki)
>> * 9.4 with Heikki's and first patch (9.4-alex-1)
>> * 9.4 with Heikki's and both patches (9.4-alex-2)
>
> It would be good to also test with unpatched 9.4 (ie. git master). The
> packed posting lists patch might account for a large part of the
> differences between 9.3 and the patched 9.4 versions.
>
> - Heikki
>

Hi,

the e-mail I sent yesterday apparently did not make it into the list,
probably because of the attachments, so I'll just link them this time.

I added the results from 9.4 master to the spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Alm8ruV3ChcgdHJfZTdOY2JBSlkwZjNuWGlIaGM0REE

It's a bit cumbersome to analyze though, so I've quickly hacked up a
simple jqplot page that allows comparing the results. It's available
here: http://www.fuzzy.cz/tmp/gin/

It's likely there are some quirks and issues - let me know about them.

The ODT with the data is available here:

http://www.fuzzy.cz/tmp/gin/gin-scan-benchmarks.ods

Three quick basic observations:

(1) The current 9.4 master is consistently better than 9.3 by about 15%
on rare words, and up to 30% on common words. See the charts for
6-word queries:

http://www.fuzzy.cz/tmp/gin/6-words-rare-94-vs-93.png
http://www.fuzzy.cz/tmp/gin/6-words-rare-94-vs-93.png

With 3-word queries the effects are even stronger & clearer,
especially with the common words.

(2) Heikki's patches seem to work OK, i.e. improve the performance, but
only with rare words.

http://www.fuzzy.cz/tmp/gin/heikki-vs-94-rare.png

With 3 words the impact is much stronger than with 6 words,
presumably because it depends on how frequent the combination of
words is (~ multiplication of probabilities). See

http://www.fuzzy.cz/tmp/gin/heikki-vs-94-3-common-words.png
http://www.fuzzy.cz/tmp/gin/heikki-vs-94-6-common-words.png

for comparison of 9.4 master vs. 9.4+heikki's patches.

(3) A file with explain plans for 4 queries suffering ~2x slowdown,
and explain plans with 9.4 master and Heikki's patches is available
here:

http://www.fuzzy.cz/tmp/gin/queries.txt

All the queries have 6 common words, and the explain plans look
just fine to me - exactly like the plans for other queries.

Two things now caught my eye. First some of these queries actually
have words repeated - either exactly like "database & database" or
in negated form like "!anything & anything". Second, while
generating the queries, I use "dumb" frequency, where only exact
matches count. I.e. "write != written" etc. But the actual number
of hits may be much higher - for example "write" matches exactly
just 5% documents, but using @@ it matches more than 20%.

I don't know if that's the actual cause though.

regards
Tomas