I am relatively new to using Postgres, but am wondering what could be the workaround here.
I have a table with about 20 columns and 250 million rows, and an index created for the timestamp column time (but no partitions).
Queries sent to the table have been failing (although using the view first/last 100 rows function in PgAdmin works), running endlessly. Even simple select * queries.
For example, if I want to LIMIT a selection of the data to 10
SELECT * from mytable
WHERE time::timestamp < '2019-01-01'
LIMIT 10;
Such a query hangs - what can be done to optimize queries in a table this large? When the table was of a smaller size (~ 100 million rows), queries would always complete. What should one do in this case?
If time is of data type timestamp or the index is created on (time::timestamp), the query should be fast as lightning.
Please show the CREATE TABLE and the CREATE INDEX statement, and the EXPLAIN output for the query for more details.
"Query that doesn't complete" usually means that it does disk swaps. Especially when you mention the fact that with 100M rows it manages to complete. That's because index for 100M rows still fits in your memory. But index twice this size doesn't.
Limit won't help you here, as database probably decides to read the index first, and that's what kills it.
You could try and increase available memory, but partitioning would actually be the best solution here.
Partitioning means smaller tables. Smaller tables means smaller indexes. Smaller indexes have better chances to fit into your memory.
Related
Using PostgreSQL 14.3.1, I have created a database instance that is now 1TB in size. The main userlogs table is 751GB in size with 525GB used for data and 226GB used for various indexes on this table. The userlogs table currently contains over 900 million rows. In order to assist with querying this table, a separate Logdates table holds all unique dates for the user logs and there is an integer foreign key column for logdates created in userlogs called logdateID. Amongst the various indexes on the userlogs table, one of them is on logdateID. There are 104 date entries in Logdates table. When running the below query I would expect the index to be used and the 104 records to be retrieved in a reasonable period of time.
select distinct logdateid from userlogs;
This query took a few hours to return with the data. I did an explain plan on the query and the output is as shown below.
"HashAggregate (cost=80564410.60..80564412.60 rows=200 width=4)"
" Group Key: logdateid"
" -> Seq Scan on userlogs (cost=0.00..78220134.28 rows=937710528 width=4)"
I then issues the below command to request the database to use the index.
set enable_seqscan=off
The revised explain plan now comes as below:
"Unique (cost=0.57..3705494150.82 rows=200 width=4)"
" -> Index Only Scan using ix_userlogs_logdateid on userlogs (cost=0.57..3703149874.49 rows=937710528 width=4)"
However, when running the same query, it still takes a few hours to retrieve the data. My question is, why should it take that long to retrieve the data if it is doing an index only scan?
The machine on which the database sits is highly spec'd: a xeon 16-core processor, that with virtualisation enabled, gives 32 logical cores. There is 96GB of RAM and data storage is via a RAID 10 configured 2TB SSD disk with a separate 500GB system SSD disk.
There is no possibilities to optimize such queries in PostGreSQL due to the internal structure of the data storage into rows inside pages.
All queries involving an aggregate in PostGreSQL such as COUNT, COUNT DISTINCT or DISTINCT must read all rows inside the table pages to produce the result.
Let'us take a look over the paper I wrote about this problem :
PostGreSQL vs Microsoft SQL Server – Comparison part 2 : COUNT performances
It seems like your table has none of its pages set as all visible (compare pg_class.relallvisible to the actual number of pages in the table), which is weird because even insert-only tables should get autovacuumed in v13 and up. This will severely punish the index-only scan. You can try to manually vacuum the table to see if that changes things.
It is also weird that it is not using parallelization. It certainly should be. What are your non-default configuration settings?
Finally, I wouldn't expect even the poor plan you show to take a few hours. Maybe your hardware is not performing up to what it should. (Also, RAID 10 requires at least 4 disks, but your description makes it sound like that is not what you have)
Since you have the foreign key table, you could use that in your query, just testing each row that it has at least one row from the log table.
select logdateid from logdate where exists
(select 1 from userlogs where userlogs.logdateid=logdate.logdateid);
The table contains around 700 000 data. Is there any way to make the query run faster?
This table is stored on a server.
I have tried to run the query by taking the specific columns.
If select * from table_name is unusually slow, check for these things:
Network speed. How large is the data and how fast is your network? For large queries you may want to think about your data in bytes instead of rows. Run select bytes/1024/1024/1024 gb from dba_segments where segment_name = 'TABLE_NAME'; and compare that with your network speed.
Row fetch size. If the application or IDE is fetching one-row-at-a-time, each row has a large overhead with network lag. You may need to increase that setting.
Empty segment. In a few weird cases the table's segment size can increase and never shrink. For example, if the table used to have billions of rows, and they were deleted but not truncated, the space would not be released. Then a select * from table_name may need to read a lot of empty extents to get to the real data. If the GB size from the above query seems too large, run alter table table_name move; to rebuild the table and possible save space.
Recursive query. A query that simple almost couldn't have a bad execution plan. It's possible, but rate, for a recursive query has a bad execution plan. While the query is running, look at select * from gv$sql where users_executing > 0;. There might be a data dictionary query that's really slow and needs to be tuned.
This is a follow-up to the question at Slow Postgres 9.3 queries.
The new indexes definitely help. But what we're seeing is sometimes queries are much slower in practice than when we run EXPLAIN ANALYZE. An example is the following, run on the production database:
explain analyze SELECT * FROM messages WHERE groupid=957 ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 20 OFFSET 31980;
QUERY PLAN
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Limit (cost=127361.90..127441.55 rows=20 width=747) (actual time=152.036..152.143 rows=20 loops=1)
-> Index Scan Backward using idx_groupid_id on messages (cost=0.43..158780.12 rows=39869 width=747) (actual time=0.080..150.484 rows=32000 loops=1)
Index Cond: (groupid = 957)
Total runtime: 152.186 ms
(4 rows)
With slow query logging turned on, we see instances of this query taking over 2 seconds. We also have log_lock_waits=true, and no slow locks are reported around the same time. What could explain the vast difference in execution times?
LIMIT x OFFSET y generally performs not much faster than LIMIT x + y. A large OFFSET is always comparatively expensive. The suggested index in the linked question helps, but while you cannot get index-only scans out of it, Postgres still has to check visibility in the heap (the main relation) for at least x + y rows to determine the correct result.
SELECT *
FROM messages
WHERE groupid = 957
ORDER BY id DESC
LIMIT 20
OFFSET 31980;
CLUSTER on your index (groupid,id) would help to increase locality of data in the heap and reduce the number of data pages to be read per query. Definitely a win. But if all groupid are equally likely to be queried, that's not going to remove the bottleneck of too little RAM for cache. If you have concurrent access, consider pg_repack instead of CLUSTER:
Optimize Postgres timestamp query range
Do you actually need all columns returned? (SELECT *) A covering index enabling index-only scans might help if you only need a few small columns returned. (autovacuum must be strong enough to cope with writes to the table, though. Read-only table would be ideal.)
Also, according to your linked question, your table is 32 GB on disk. (Typically a bit more in RAM). The index on (groupid,id) adds another 308 MB at least (without any bloat):
SELECT pg_size_pretty(7337880.0 * 44); -- row count * tuple size
Making sense of Postgres row sizes
You have 8 GB RAM, of which you expect around 4.5 GB to be used for cache (effective_cache_size = 4608MB). That's enough to cache the index for repeated use, but not nearly enough to also cache the whole table.
If your query happens to find data pages in cache, it's fast. Else, not so much. Big difference, even with SSD storage (much more with HDD).
Not directly related to this query, but 8 MB of work_mem (work_mem = 7864kB) seems way to small for your setup. Depending on various other factors I would set this to at least 64MB (unless you have many concurrent queries with sort / hash operations). Like #Craig commented, EXPLAIN (BUFFERS, ANALYZE) might tell us more.
The best query plan also depends on value frequencies. If only few rows pass the filter, the result might be empty for certain groupid and the query is comparatively fast. If a large portion of the table has to be fetched, a plain sequential scan wins. You need valid table statistics (autovacuum again). And possibly a larger statistics target for groupid:
Keep PostgreSQL from sometimes choosing a bad query plan
Since OFFSET is slow, an alternative is to simulate OFFSET using another column and some index preparation. We require a UNIQUE column (like a PRIMARY KEY) on the table. If there is none, one can be added with:
CREATE SEQUENCE messages_pkey_seq ;
ALTER TABLE messages
ADD COLUMN message_id integer DEFAULT nextval('messages_pkey_seq');
Next we create the position column for the OFFSET simulation:
ALTER TABLE messages ADD COLUMN position INTEGER;
UPDATE messages SET position = q.position FROM (SELECT message_id,
row_number() OVER (PARTITION BY group_id ORDER BY id DESC) AS position
FROM messages ) AS q WHERE q.message_id=messages.message_id ;
CREATE INDEX ON messages ( group_id, position ) ;
Now we are ready for the new version of the query in the OP:
SELECT * FROM messages WHERE group_id = 957 AND
position BETWEEN 31980 AND (31980+20-1) ;
I have a query that feels like it is taking more time then it should be. This only applies on the first query for a given set of parameters, so when cached there is no issue.
I am not sure what to expect, however, given the setup and settings I was hoping someone could shed some light on a few questions and give some insight into what can be done to speed up the query. The table in question is fairly large and Postgres estimates around 155963000 in it (14 GB).
Query
select ts, sum(amp) as total_amp, sum(230 * factor) as wh
from data_cbm_aggregation_15_min
where virtual_id in (1818) and ts between '2015-02-01 00:00:00' and '2015-03-31 23:59:59'
and deleted is null
group by ts
order by ts
When I started looking into this the query it took around 15 seconds, after some changes I have gotten it to around 10 seconds which still seems long for a simply query like this. Here are the results from explain analyze: http://explain.depesz.com/s/97V1. Note the reason why GroupAggregate returns the same amount of rows is this example only has one virtual_id being used, but there can be more.
Table and index
Table being queried, it has values inserted into it every 15 minutes
CREATE TABLE data_cbm_aggregation_15_min (
virtual_id integer NOT NULL,
ts timestamp without time zone NOT NULL,
amp real,
recs smallint,
min_amp real,
max_amp real,
deleted boolean,
factor real DEFAULT 0.25,
min_amp_ts timestamp without time zone,
max_amp_ts timestamp without time zone
)
ALTER TABLE data_cbm_aggregation_15_min ALTER COLUMN virtual_id SET STATISTICS 1000;
ALTER TABLE data_cbm_aggregation_15_min ALTER COLUMN ts SET STATISTICS 1000;
The index that is used in the query
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX idx_data_cbm_aggregation_15_min_virtual_id_ts
ON data_cbm_aggregation_15_min USING btree (virtual_id, ts DESC);
ALTER TABLE data_cbm_aggregation_15_min
CLUSTER ON idx_data_cbm_aggregation_15_min_virtual_id_ts;
Postgres settings
Other settings are default.
default_statistics_target = 100
maintenance_work_mem = 2GB
effective_cache_size = 11GB
work_mem = 256MB
shared_buffers = 3840MB
random_page_cost = 1
What I have tried
I have been following the Things to try before you post in https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Slow_Query_Questions and the results in a bit more detail were as follows:
Fiddling with the Postgres settings, mostly lowering random_page_cost since the index scan, while it seems not too special is miles ahead of the bitmap heap scan it tried doing instead when the random_page_cost was higher.
Adding increased statistics to the virtual_id and ts columns which the index and WHERE conditions are based on. The query planner's estimated row count was much closer to the actual row count after changing this.
Clustering on the idx_data_cbm_aggregation_15_min_virtual_id_ts index did not seem to change much, not that I noticed.
Running VACUUM manually did not change much, I am already running autovacuum so this was no surprise.
Running REINDEX on the index shrunk it considerably (by almost 50%!) but it did not improve the speed by much.
A couple of small improvements
SELECT ts, sum(amp) AS total_amp, sum(factor) * 230 AS wh
FROM data_cbm_aggregation_15_min
WHERE virtual_id = 1818
AND ts >= '2015-02-01 00:00'
AND ts < '2015-04-01 00:00'
AND deleted IS NULL
GROUP BY ts
ORDER BY ts;
sum(230 * factor) - it's cheaper to multiply the sum once instead of multiplying each element: sum(factor) * 230 The result is the same, even with NULL values.
ts between '2015-02-01 00:00:00' and '2015-03-31 23:59:59' is potentially incorrect. To include all of March 2015, use the presented alternative. BETWEEN is translated to ts >= lower AND ts <= upper anyway. It is always slightly faster to spell it out.
virtual_id in (1818) is just a needlessly convoluted way to say virtual_id = 1818.
Better index, potentially bigger improvement
CREATE INDEX data_cbm_aggregation_15_min_special_idx
ON data_cbm_aggregation_15_min (virtual_id, ts, amp, factor)
WHERE deleted IS NULL;
I see nothing in your question that would suggest DESC in your original index. While Index Scan Backward is almost as fast as a plain Index Scan, it's still better to drop the modifier.
Most importantly, there are index-only scans since Postgres 9.2. The two index columns I appended (amp, factor) only make sense if you get index-only scans out of it.
Since you obviously are not interested in deleted rows, make it a partial index. Only pays if you have more than a few deleted rows in the table.
If you have other large parts of the table that can be excluded, add more conditions - and remember to repeat the condition in the query (even if it seems redundant) so Postgres understands that the index is applicable.
Table definition
Reordering table columns like this would save 8 bytes per row:
CREATE TABLE data_cbm_aggregation_15_min (
virtual_id integer NOT NULL,
recs smallint,
deleted boolean,
ts timestamp NOT NULL,
amp real,
min_amp real,
max_amp real,
factor real DEFAULT 0.25,
min_amp_ts timestamp,
max_amp_ts timestamp
);
Related:
Configuring PostgreSQL for read performance
Most important information for last
The first query call can be substantially more expensive for very big tables, since the whole table cannot be cached. Subsequent calls profit from the populated cache. Postgres caches blocks, not necessarily whole tables.
One more thing that can be important for the first call. Due to the MVCC model of Postgres it has to maintain visibility information. When reading pages of a table the first time since the last write operation, Postgres opportunistically updates visibility information, which can impose some extra cost for the first access (and help a lot for subsequent calls). More in the manual here. Related answer on dba.SE:
Why does a SELECT statement dirty cache buffers in Postgres?
About what you've tried so far
SET STATISTICS 1000 for ts and virtual_id was an excellent idea, but the effect was largely nullified by setting random_page_cost = 1, which basically forces an index scan for this query either way.
random_page_cost = 1 is telling Postgres that random access is just as cheap as sequential access. This makes sense for a DB that (almost) completely resides in cache. For a DB with huge tables like yours, this setting seems too extreme (even if it gets Postgres to favor the desired index scan). Set it to random_page_cost = 1.1 or probably higher.
A bitmap index scan is typically a good plan for the first call of the query you presented - for data distributed randomly across the table. Since you clustered the table just like you need it for this query, an index scan is more efficient. The question is: will your table stay clustered?
Your settings for work_mem and other resources depend on how much RAM you have, the speed of your disks, on access pattern, how many concurrent connections you typically have, what other programs on the server compete for resources, etc. work_mem = 256MB seems too high. You don't need nearly as much for the presented query. Setting it that high may actually harm performance, because it reduces RAM available to cache.
REINDEX is not redundant immediately after CLUSTER, since that recreates all indexes anyway. You must have run REINDEX before cluster, or you have heavy write access on the table to get so much bloat again already.
Various
Upgrade to Postgres 9.4 (or the upcoming 9.5, currently alpha). Version 9.2 is 3 years old now, the latest version has received many improvements.
The query plan suggests that nothing is actually aggregated. rows=4,117 are read from the index and rows=4,117 remain after GroupAggregate. Looks like rows are unique on ts already? Then you can remove the aggregation completely and make it a simple SELECT ...
If that's just a misleading EXPLAIN output and you typically output much fewer rows than are read, a MATERIALIZED VIEW with index on ts would be another option. Especially in combination with Postgres 9.4, which introduces REFRESH MATERIALIZED VIEW CONCURRENTLY.
I am facing a problem when doing order by on a table.
My select query is working fine, but when i do order by (even on the primary key) it just goes on and on with no results. Finally i need to kill the session. The table has20K records.
Any suggestion for the this?
Query is as:
SELECT * FROM Users ORDER BY ID;
I do not about know about the query plan as i am new to oracle
For the unordered query, Is SQL Developer retrieving and displaying 20K rows, or just the fisrt 50? Your comparison might not be fair.
What is the size of those 20K rows: select bytes/1024/1024 MB from user_segments where segment_name = 'USERS'; I've seen many cases where a few megabytes of data use many gigabytes of storage. Maybe the data was very large before and somebody just deleted it (this doesn't remove the space). Or maybe somebody inserted those rows 1 at a time with an APPEND hint, and each row is taking an entire block.
Your query might be waiting for more temp tablespace for sorting, look at DBA_RESUMABLE.