Re: index vs. seq scan choice?

[Steve Atkins <steve(at)blighty(dot)com>]

On May 24, 2007, at 8:26 PM, Tom Lane wrote:

> "Joshua D. Drake" <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com> writes:
> > Tom Lane wrote:
> > > I'm not sure I want to vote for another 10x increase by
> > > default, though.
>
> > Outside of longer analyze times, and slightly more space taken up  
> > by the
> > statistics, what is the downside?
>
> Longer plan times --- several of the selfuncs.c routines grovel  
> over all
> the entries in the pg_statistic row.  AFAIK no one's measured the real
> impact of that, but it could easily be counterproductive for simple  
> queries.

The lateness of the hour is suppressing my supposed statistics savvy,
so this may not make sense, but...

Would it be possible to look at a much larger number of samples  
during analyze,
then look at the variation in those to generate a reasonable number of
pg_statistic "samples" to represent our estimate of the actual  
distribution?
More datapoints for tables where the planner might benefit from it,  
fewer
where it wouldn't.

Cheers,
  Steve