[Bug 10651] New: Optimisation avoiding sorts (K2-OrderbyExprWithout-10 & K2-OrderbyExprWithout-40)

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=10651

           Summary: Optimisation avoiding sorts (K2-OrderbyExprWithout-10
                    & K2-OrderbyExprWithout-40)
           Product: XML Query Test Suite
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: PC
        OS/Version: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: XML Query Test Suite
        AssignedTo: andrew.eisenberg@us.ibm.com
        ReportedBy: Probst_Martin@emc.com
         QAContact: public-qt-comments@w3.org


K2-OrderbyExprWithout-10 looks like this:

  for $a in (1, 4, 2)
  let $i := (1, 3, 2)
  order by $i
  return $i

The test tries to cause an order by with an order spec that is a sequence of
items, and thus expects XPTY0004.

However, an XQuery engine might find out that the order spec expression $i is
constant over the whole tuple sequence. Thus, the engine can evaluate the whole
query without doing any sort, thus avoiding the error at all and yielding (1,
3, 2, 1, 3, 2, 1, 3, 2) as the result. Or actually, those values in any order
because the ordering of the sequence is undefined as the order spec will always
give identical values.

I think that is a legal optimisation according to the dreaded "Errors and
Optimizations" section. While the implementation has to evaluate $i to yield
the return value, in the context of the order by expression it does not need to
evaluate the sequence at all, so it is free to swallow the error and give a
result. Also, apart from legalese, I think this is the kind of optimisation
that section wants to allow.

I suggest changing the query so that the $i part depends on $a, which means the
sort factor for the tuple sequence is not constant over the whole query:

  for $a in (1, 4, 2)
  let $i := (1, $a, 2)
  order by $i
  return $i

The same applies to K2-OrderbyExprWithout-40, which is a more complicated
expression but has the exact same problem and solution.

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Received on Saturday, 18 September 2010 21:00:42 UTC