| PostgreSQL 8.3.19 Documentation | ||||
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The intagg module provides an integer aggregator and an enumerator.
  The aggregator is an aggregate function
  int_array_aggregate(integer)
  that produces an integer array
  containing exactly the integers it is fed.
  Here is a not-tremendously-useful example:
 
test=# select int_array_aggregate(i) from
test-#   generate_series(1,10,2) i;
 int_array_aggregate
---------------------
 {1,3,5,7,9}
(1 row)
   The enumerator is a function
  int_array_enum(integer[])
  that returns setof integer.  It is essentially the reverse
  operation of the aggregator: given an array of integers, expand it
  into a set of rows.  For example,
 
test=# select * from int_array_enum(array[1,3,5,7,9]);
 int_array_enum
----------------
              1
              3
              5
              7
              9
(5 rows)
 Many database systems have the notion of a one to many table. Such a table usually sits between two indexed tables, for example:
CREATE TABLE left (id INT PRIMARY KEY, ...); CREATE TABLE right (id INT PRIMARY KEY, ...); CREATE TABLE one_to_many(left INT REFERENCES left, right INT REFERENCES right);
It is typically used like this:
  SELECT right.* from right JOIN one_to_many ON (right.id = one_to_many.right)
    WHERE one_to_many.left = item;
 This will return all the items in the right hand table for an entry in the left hand table. This is a very common construct in SQL.
Now, this methodology can be cumbersome with a very large number of entries in the one_to_many table. Often, a join like this would result in an index scan and a fetch for each right hand entry in the table for a particular left hand entry. If you have a very dynamic system, there is not much you can do. However, if you have some data which is fairly static, you can create a summary table with the aggregator.
CREATE TABLE summary as SELECT left, int_array_aggregate(right) AS right FROM one_to_many GROUP BY left;
This will create a table with one row per left item, and an array of right items. Now this is pretty useless without some way of using the array; that's why there is an array enumerator. You can do
SELECT left, int_array_enum(right) FROM summary WHERE left = item;
  The above query using int_array_enum produces the same results
  as
 
SELECT left, right FROM one_to_many WHERE left = item;
The difference is that the query against the summary table has to get only one row from the table, whereas the direct query against one_to_many must index scan and fetch a row for each entry.
On one system, an EXPLAIN showed a query with a cost of 8488 was reduced to a cost of 329. The original query was a join involving the one_to_many table, which was replaced by:
SELECT right, count(right) FROM
  ( SELECT left, int_array_enum(right) AS right
    FROM summary JOIN (SELECT left FROM left_table WHERE left = item) AS lefts
         ON (summary.left = lefts.left)
  ) AS list
  GROUP BY right
  ORDER BY count DESC;