viktorianer

viktorianer

High Performance PostgreSQL for Rails: Explanation regarding the use of includes with a limit (Page 124)

Dear Andrew, @andatki

I found the explanation regarding the use of .includes() with a limit in the context of vehicle reservations to be quite insightful. However, I believe the discussion on performance implications could benefit from further clarification, particularly regarding the difference in behavior with and without a limit.

Here’s a suggested rewrite to enhance clarity:


When using .includes() to load vehicle reservations, the query is split into two parts. First, a query retrieves a limited number of vehicles (e.g., 2 vehicles). Then, another query fetches the associated reservations for these vehicles using an IN clause with the vehicle_ids of the retrieved vehicles. Keep in mind that if the IN clause contains too many values, it can lead to performance issues.

Performance Implications

  • Without limit: If there are many vehicles, the IN clause can become very large, which may degrade performance.
  • With limit: The IN clause remains small, improving performance for the secondary query.

Additionally, this explanation can move before LEFT OUTER JOIN part, in order to avoid a context switch.

I hope this suggestion helps make the performance implications clearer for the readers.

Best regards,

Viktor

Most Liked

andatki

andatki

Author of High Performance PostgreSQL for Rails

Thank you @viktorianer. Your description makes sense. If we revise the book in the future, I’ll pay extra attention to this section, as eager loading is of course a very common pattern.

In my experience, I’ve seen poor performance from big lists of values in an IN clause on big tables. I wrote up some thoughts about this in a blog post here: Big Problems From Big IN lists with Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL | Software Engineer, Author, High Performance PostgreSQL for Rails

Where Next?

Popular Pragmatic Bookshelf topics Top

jimmykiang
This test is broken right out of the box… — FAIL: TestAgent (7.82s) agent_test.go:77: Error Trace: agent_test.go:77 agent_test.go:...
New
jon
Some minor things in the paper edition that says “3 2020” on the title page verso, not mentioned in the book’s errata online: p. 186 But...
New
joepstender
The generated iex result below should list products instead of product for the metadata. (page 67) iex> product = %Product{} %Pento....
New
rmurray10127
Title: Intuitive Python: docker run… denied error (page 2) Attempted to run the docker command in both CLI and Powershell PS C:\Users\r...
New
jskubick
I’m under the impression that when the reader gets to page 136 (“View Data with the Database Inspector”), the code SHOULD be able to buil...
New
nicoatridge
Hi, I have just acquired Michael Fazio’s “Kotlin and Android Development” to learn about game programming for Android. I have a game in p...
New
adamwoolhether
I’m not quite sure what’s going on here, but I’m unable to have to containers successfully complete the Readiness/Liveness checks. I’m im...
New
taguniversalmachine
It seems the second code snippet is missing the code to set the current_user: current_user: Accounts.get_user_by_session_token(session["...
New
taguniversalmachine
Hi, I am getting an error I cannot figure out on my test. I have what I think is the exact code from the book, other than I changed “us...
New
mcpierce
@mfazio23 I’ve applied the changes from Chapter 5 of the book and everything builds correctly and runs. But, when I try to start a game,...
New

Other popular topics Top

PragmaticBookshelf
Learn from the award-winning programming series that inspired the Elixir language, and go on a step-by-step journey through the most impo...
New
siddhant3030
I’m thinking of buying a monitor that I can rotate to use as a vertical monitor? Also, I want to know if someone is using it for program...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Design and develop sophisticated 2D games that are as much fun to make as they are to play. From particle effects and pathfinding to soci...
New
AstonJ
Curious to know which languages and frameworks you’re all thinking about learning next :upside_down_face: Perhaps if there’s enough peop...
New
AstonJ
poll poll Be sure to check out @Dusty’s article posted here: An Introduction to Alternative Keyboard Layouts It’s one of the best write-...
New
AstonJ
We have a thread about the keyboards we have, but what about nice keyboards we come across that we want? If you have seen any that look n...
New
dimitarvp
Small essay with thoughts on macOS vs. Linux: I know @Exadra37 is just waiting around the corner to scream at me “I TOLD YOU SO!!!” but I...
New
AstonJ
Was just curious to see if any were around, found this one: I got 51/100: Not sure if it was meant to buy I am sure at times the b...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight Mike Riley @mriley This month, we turn the spotlight on Mike Riley, author of Portable Python Projects. Mike’s book ...
New
AstonJ
This is cool! DEEPSEEK-V3 ON M4 MAC: BLAZING FAST INFERENCE ON APPLE SILICON We just witnessed something incredible: the largest open-s...
New

Sub Categories: