What would be nice, and I don't know how it would be done or what the syntax would be, would be a feature that allows PostgreSQL to skip not only the parsing stage, but the planning stage as well. Then, when the data has changed dramatically enough to warrant it, as you point out, a command can be issued to 'refresh' the query plan. My 15-way join has expanded to a 19-way join and is still instantaneous, albeit on a very small set of data. Before 7.1, the query would simply have taken far too long, and I would have had to denormalize the database for performance purposes. With the explicit join syntax, it allows me to design the database 'the right way'. I basically used EXPLAIN SELECT... to determine the explicit join order, so as the data changes, its something I'll have to do on occassion to ensure good performance, but at least its now possible. :-) Mike Mascari [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: Thomas Lockhart [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, April 27, 2001 9:49 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; 'Tom Lane' Cc: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: [HACKERS] Re: Any optimizations to the join code in 7.1? > ... 7.1 out of the box took only 2 seconds! I was amazed > and shocked at this damned impressive improvement in planning > speed....until I actually used the explicit JOIN syntax described in > 11.2. Instanteous results! Instantaneous..... But it is possible, under many circumstances, for query optimization to be a benefit for a many-table query. The docs indicate that explicit join syntax bypasses that, even for inner joins, so you may find that this syntax is a net loss in performance depending on the query and your choice of table order. Presumably we will be interested in making these two forms of inner join equivalent in behavior in a future release. Tom, what are the impediments we might encounter in doing this? - Thomas ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------- ------ TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html