Currently, the planner keeps paths that appear to win on the grounds of either cheapest startup cost or cheapest total cost. It suddenly struck me that in many simple cases (viz, those with no LIMIT, EXISTS, cursor fast-start preference, etc) we could know a-priori that cheapest startup cost is not going to be interesting, and hence immediately discard any path that doesn't win on total cost.
This would require some additional logic to detect whether the case applies, as well as extra complexity in add_path. So it's possible that it wouldn't be worthwhile overall. Still, it seems like it might be a useful idea to investigate. Thoughts? regards, tom lane -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers