vgram - prototype of V-gram indexing for PostgreSQL

Parameters

Parameters of V-gram extraction are specified in vgram.h.

• minQ – minimal length of V-gram
• maxQ – maximal length of V-gram
• isExtractable(c) – function which checks if given character could be extracted into V-gram (i.e. is part of word)
• VGRAM_LIMIT_RATIO – maximal frequency of V-gram to be extracted. If V-gram is more frequent, then longer V-grams are extracted instead.
• DEFAULT_CHARACTER_FREQUENCY – default selectivity of character for selectivity estimation (???)
• EMPTY_CHARACTER – character to be used to mark words boundaries

Collecting V-gram statistics

Aggregate function qgram_stat(text) collects V-gram frequency statistics and stores it into qgram_stat table. Statistics is small, but its collecting is slow and resource consumption process. This is why, it makes sense to collect statistics using small random sample of your big dataset.

See following example to collect V-gram statistics using dblp_titles.s column. If previously collected statistics exists, then qgram_stat(text) overrides it.

SELECT qgram_stat(s) FROM dblp_titles;

Statistics is cached in local memory of backend memory. Use qgram_stat_reset_cache() to reset statistics.

You can check V-gram extraction using get_vgrams(text) function. NOTICE prints estimated frequencies of V-grams.

# SELECT get_vgrams('best string ever');
NOTICE:  $be - 0.017040
NOTICE:  bes - 0.002190
NOTICE:  est$ - 0.005348
NOTICE:  $str - 0.004012
NOTICE:  stri - 0.005604
NOTICE:  trin - 0.003417
NOTICE:  $ev - 0.000388
NOTICE:  eve - 0.006021
NOTICE:  ver$ - 0.007446
                 get_vgrams
--------------------------------------------
 {$be,bes,est$,$str,stri,trin,$ev,eve,ver$}
(1 row)

Usage

Once you have statistics collected, you may build GIN index based on V-grams.

CREATE INDEX dblp_titles_s_idx ON dblp_titles USING gin (s vgram_gin_ops);

Then, this index could be used to accelerate like/ilike queries over indexed column.

# SELECT * FROM dblp_titles WHERE s LIKE '%supernova%';
    id    |                                                             s
----------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  8555415 | Enabling lock-free concurrent fine-grain access to massive distributed data: Application to supernovae detection.
  8738163 | Seeking supernovae in the clouds: a performance study.
  9108437 | Workflow management for high volume supernova search.
 10861237 | On the performance of SPAI and ADI-like preconditioners for core collapse supernova simulations in one spatial dimension.
 10862468 | Multidimensional simulations of pair-instability supernovae.
(5 rows)

Time: 2,746 ms

Note, that once V-gram statistics is updated, all previously created indexes are no longer valid!

Author

• Alexander Korotkov aekorotkov@gmail.com, OrioleDB

Availability

vgram is realized as an extension and not available in default PostgreSQL installation. It is available from github under the same license as PostgreSQL and supports PostgreSQL 9.4+.