Comment by silon42
22 days ago
The hints are needed when you have a web scale / online transaction processing application, where you want to guarantee no table scan ever. Ideally, I'd want to rrun without statistics on the tables in that case (ie, no smart joins).
> where you want to guarantee no table scan ever.
If hints are what they say they are, they cannot guarantee anything.
And they indeed are hints. FTA: “The documentation is explicit: advice "can only produce plans the core planner considers viable." Advice only nudges the planner toward one it already considered.”
honestly I dont want plan hinting so much as being able to ban table-scanning / nested loops / etc on specific tables, and be able to set that independent of actual table-size so I can coerce its failure in dev environments
+1 I agree... (except nested loops are rarely the problem, they are often the best/simplest alternative for join).