PostgreSQL famously does not implement query hints. This is about 95% true, and join_collapse_limit is the other 5%: set it to 1, and the planner joins your tables in exactly the order you wrote them. This is not an exploit or an accident of implementation; it is documented, and according to Tom Lane on pgsql-hackers, it is essentially why

The previous post on the Linux 7.0 pgbench regression ended with the same instruction every other Postgres performance post ends with: set huge pages. This post is the long version. If you have read the Postgres docs on huge_pages and you’re still not completely sure what /proc/meminfo is telling you, what the relationship is between vm.nr_hugepages and Transparent Huge

Never for a moment thinking it would be accepted, I sent in a proposal to the 4D Summit in October to give a talk about credit card processing using 4th Dimension. And, yet, it was accepted, so I guess I actually have to prepare something now. I’ll blog here about the presentation as it comes together.