On Fri, 2025-09-12 at 10:46 -0400, Ron Johnson wrote: > Purely OLTP tables (that are only accessed randomly) can of course live with 0% correlation, > but lots of tables are mixed-use, and so benefit from physical ordering on a carefully chosen field.. > > SELECT abs(correlation)::numeric(3,2) as correlation > FROM pg_stats > WHERE schemaname = 'foo' AND tablename = 'bar' > AND attname = 'blarge'; > correlation > ------------- > 0.84 > (1 row) > > Obviously 84% is no need to worry, but what about 60% or 40%? Currently, I use 60%, but would like to do better. Either the difference is gradual, so that it there is no real cut-off point, or there is a sudden plan change at some point that depends on the query the data and the parameter settings. I don't think it is possible to give reliable numbers that cover all cases. I suggest that you run a series of benchmarks with a copy of the table with different correlation values and come up with numbers that are meaningful for your individual case. Yours, Laurenz Albe
