Brian Herlihy wrote:
PG does support hints actually..
The only thing is, the hints are expressed in an obscure, ad-hoc and
implementation dependant language.
For example, the "Don't use index X" hint (the one I used) can be accessed by
replacing your index with an index on values derived from the actual index...
And then there's
select ... from (select ... offset 0)
where the "offset 0" prevents any rewriting between the two levels of query.
This replaces joins and AND clauses where the planner makes the wrong choice of join
order or filtering. I grepped my code and found four of these (all workarounds for the
same underlying problem).
Imagine I got run over by a train, and someone was reading my code. Which
would be easier for them to maintain: Code with weird SQL, or code with
sensible, well-written SQL and explicit hints? Luckily for my (hypothetical, I
hope) successor, I put massive comments in my code explaining the strange SQL.
The bad applications are ALREADY HERE. And they're WORSE to maintain than if
we had a formal hint language. The argument that hints lead to poor
application is true. But lack of hints leads to worse applications.
Craig
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