As far as I understand, deconstruct_recurse() ensures that
SpecialJoinInfo of a new join always gets added to higher position in
join_info_list than SJ infos of all joins located below the new join in
the tree. I wonder if we can rely on that fact sometimes.
One possible use case could be
placeholder.c:update_placeholder_eval_levels():
1. The first (in terms of position in join_info_list) join above
phinfo->ph_var->phrels can be marked as the (exclusive) upper bound for
all iterations.
2. The first join for which particular iteration of SJ infos
identifies the necessity to extend eval_at can be marked in
join_info_list as (exclusive) lower bound for the next iteration. This
is because that addition can only affect parents of the join whose
relations we just added to eval_at. And these essentially can't be
located at lower positions in join_info_list.
The lower limit could also be used in initsplan.c:check_outerjoin_delay().
Is this worth a patch? It's not much coding but I'd appreciate some
feedback before I try to do anything.
Thanks,
Antonin Houska (Tony)