Cost and rows path

The following EXPLAIN output shows the Cost operator:

 Access Path: +-SELECT  LIMIT 10 [Cost: 370, Rows: 10] (PATH ID: 0)
 |  Output Only: 10 tuples
 |  Execute on: Query Initiator
 | +---> SORT [Cost: 370, Rows: 544] (PATH ID: 1)
 | |      Order: customer_dimension.customer_name ASC
 | |      Output Only: 10 tuples
 | |      Execute on: Query Initiator
 | | +---> STORAGE ACCESS for customer_dimension [Cost: 331, Rows: 544] (PATH ID: 2)
 | | |      Projection: public.customer_dimension_DBD_1_rep_vmartdb_design_vmartdb_design_node0001
 | | |      Materialize: customer_dimension.customer_state, customer_dimension.customer_name
 | | |      Filter: (customer_dimension.customer_gender = 'Male')
 | | |      Filter: (customer_dimension.customer_state = ANY (ARRAY['MA', 'NH']))
 | | |      Execute on: Query Initiator

The Row operator is the number of rows the optimizer estimates the query will return. Letters after numbers refer to the units of measure (K=thousand, M=million, B=billion, T=trillion), so the output for the following query indicates that the number of rows to return is 50 thousand.

=> EXPLAIN SELECT customer_gender FROM customer_dimension;
 Access Path:
 +-STORAGE ACCESS for customer_dimension [Cost: 17, Rows: 50K (3 RLE)] (PATH ID: 1)
 |  Projection: public.customer_dimension_DBD_1_rep_vmartdb_design_vmartdb_design_node0001
 |  Materialize: customer_dimension.customer_gender
 |  Execute on: Query Initiator

The reference to (3 RLE) in the STORAGE ACCESS path means that the optimizer estimates that the storage access operator returns 50K rows. Because the column is run-length encoded (RLE), the real number of RLE rows returned is only three rows:

• 1 row for female

• 1 row for male

• 1 row that represents unknown (NULL) gender