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PostgreSQL Query
Optimization
The Ultimate Guide to Building
Efficient Queries
Second Edition
Henrietta Dombrovskaya
Boris Novikov
Anna Bailliekova
PostgreSQL Query Optimization: The Ultimate Guide to Building Efficient Queries,
Second Edition
Henrietta Dombrovskaya Boris Novikov
DRW Holdings, Chicago, IL, USA Database expert, Helsinki, Finland
Anna Bailliekova
UrbanFootprint, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Introduction������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xix
iv
Table of Contents
v
Table of Contents
vi
Table of Contents
vii
Table of Contents
viii
Table of Contents
x
Table of Contents
Index��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 335
xi
About the Authors
Henrietta Dombrovskaya is a database researcher and
developer with over 40 years of academic and industrial
experience. She holds a PhD in computer science from
the University of Saint Petersburg, Russia. At present, she
is a database architect at DRW Holdings, Chicago, Illinois.
She is an active member of the PostgreSQL community, a
frequent speaker at the PostgreSQL conference, and the
local organizer of the Chicago PostgreSQL User Group. Her
research interests are tightly coupled with practice and
are focused on developing efficient interactions between
applications and databases.
xiii
About the Authors
xiv
About the Technical Reviewer
Tom Kincaid is Vice President of Database Development at EnterpriseDB. Tom
has been developing, deploying, and supporting database systems and enterprise
software for over 25 years. Prior to joining EnterpriseDB, Tom was General Manager of
2ndQuadrant in North America where he oversaw all aspects of 2ndQuadrant’s dynamic
and growing business for Postgres products, training, support, and professional services.
He worked directly with companies from all industries and of all sizes helping them
successfully make Postgres part of their mission-critical operations.
Tom has overseen the design and delivery of Postgres training solutions as well as
the deployment of PostgreSQL both at Fortune 500 financial institutions and at military
facilities all over the world. Teams Tom has managed have delivered major features that
have become part of the PostgreSQL open source database.
Tom is also the founder and one of the organizers of the Boston PostgreSQL
User Group.
xv
Acknowledgments
It takes many people to bring a book into the world, most of whose names do not appear
on the cover. Firstly, we want to thank Jonathan Gennick, who came up with the idea
of this book and navigated it through the first edition. Without his initiative, this book
wouldn’t exist. We’re also grateful to the entire team at Apress who have supported this
endeavor across two editions.
The contributions of Tom Kincaid as the technical reviewer cannot be overstated.
His careful, thorough, and thoughtful feedback improved the content, organization,
and usability of the text. This book is more precise, more understandable, and more
comprehensive, thanks to Tom. We’re grateful that he returned for the second edition,
graciously taking another close read. Any remaining issues are, of course, our own
responsibility.
After the first edition of this book was released, we heard from many people
regarding issues in the postgres_air database, topics readers wished were covered,
and passages that could have been more clear. This second edition incorporates many
of their suggestions. We are grateful to everyone who took the time to read the book
closely and share their comments and suggestions with us. In particular, Hannu Krosing
provided thorough, detailed, and specific feedback on postgres_air, and Egor Rogov
provided many helpful suggestions for making the book more understandable and clear.
Thank you to Jeff Czaplewski, Alyssa Ritchie, and Greg Nelson, who spent hours,
days, and weeks making No-ORM (NORM) work with Java. My time at EDB was a chance
to work with and learn from the best of the Postgres best. My colleagues at DRW—both
application and database administrator (DBA) teams—have given me new opportunities
to push the limits of Postgres.
—Henrietta Dombrovskaya
xvii
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank Andy Civettini for teaching me how to write and talk about technical
topics in an accessible way and for years of academic and professional encouragement.
My colleagues at UrbanFootprint challenge and inspire me every day. Finally, John,
Nadia, and Kira Bailliekova have each supported me and sacrificed for the sake of this
book; I am endlessly grateful to them.
—Anna Bailliekova
xviii
Introduction
“Optimization” is a broad enough term to encompass performance tuning, personal
improvement, and marketing via social engine and invariably evinces high hopes and
expectations from readers. As such, it is prudent to begin not by introducing what
is covered, but rather, why this book exists and what will not be covered, to avoid
disappointing readers who approach it with inappropriate expectations. Then, we
proceed with what this book is about, the target audience, what is covered, and how to
get the most use out of it.
xx
Introduction
• New and cool features – These change with every new release, and
our goal is to cover the fundamentals.
There are plenty of books available that cover all of the topics listed previously,
except the last, but this book is not one of them. Instead, we focus on everyday
challenges database developers face: when that one application page keeps timing out,
when a customer is kicked out of the application just before the “Contract Signed” page,
when the CEO dashboard is showing an hourglass instead of yesterday’s product KPI, or
when procuring more hardware is not an option.
Everything we are presenting in this book has been tested and implemented in an
industrial environment, and though it may look like magic, we will explain any query
performance improvement or lack thereof.
Target Audience
Most of the time, a book about optimization is viewed as a book for DBAs. Since our goal
is to prove that optimization is more than just building indexes, we hope that this book
will be beneficial for a broader audience.
This book is for IT professionals working in PostgreSQL who want to develop
performant and scalable applications. It is for anyone whose job title contains the
words “database developer” or “database administrator” or who is a backend developer
charged with programming database calls. It is also useful to system architects involved
in the overall design of application systems running against a PostgreSQL database.
xxi
Introduction
What about report writers and business intelligence specialists? Unfortunately, large
analytical reports are most often thought of as being slow by definition. However, if a
report is written without considering how it will perform, the execution time might end
up being not just minutes or hours, but years! For most analytical reports, execution time
can be significantly reduced by using simple techniques covered in this book.
xxii
Introduction
To install the training database on your local system, please refer to the GitHub repo:
github.com/Hettie-d/postgres_air.
The README.md file contains the link to the data directory and detailed installation
instructions.
In addition, after you restore the data, you will need to run the script in Listing 1 to
create several indexes.
We will use this database schema to illustrate the concepts and methods that are
covered in this book. You can also use this schema to practice optimization techniques.
This schema contains data that might be stored in an airline booking system. We
assume that you have booked a flight online, at least once, so the data structure should
be easily understood. Of course, the structure of this database is much simpler than the
structure of any real database of this kind.
Anyone who books a flight needs to create an account, which stores login
information, first and last names, and contact information. We also store data about
frequent flyers, which might or might not be attached to an account. A person who
makes a booking can book for several passengers, who might or might not have their
accounts in the system. Each booking may include several flights (legs). Before the flight,
each traveler is issued a boarding pass with a seat number.
The Entity-Relationship (ER) diagram for this database is presented in Figure 1.
xxiii
Introduction
• booking contains information about booked trips; each trip may have
several booking legs and several passengers.
• aircraft provides the aircraft’s description, and the seat table stores
seat maps for each of the aircraft types.
xxiv
Introduction
xxv
CHAPTER
The Key to
Digital
Transformation
Success
In the age of digitization, businesses face a critical imperative: to adapt and
embrace innovation or risk being left behind in a rapidly evolving world.
The concept of creative destruction, which is the process where innovation
and technology advancements are reshaping industries and business models,
is the driving force behind digital transformations. In this chapter, you’ll
explore what digital transformation is and the state of digital transformation
programs where unfortunately there is a high failure rate. Learn about the
challenges of digital transformation and the key role strategic alignment plays
in its success. Discover how process serves as a common language, aligning
organizations vertically and horizontally, and explore the Process Inventory
But how do organizations achieve strategic alignment? After all, this is not a
new concept, yet it exists in so few organizations. I believe the answer lies in
language. Everyone in these organizations is focused on their responsibilities,
and they develop their perspectives based on their work. This often results in
lower-level contributors not fully understanding the strategic messages
coming from the CEO. As a result, they may fail to invest their energies in
contributing to the transformational ambitions of leadership. When a person
from a business unit conveys requirements to a technology professional, they
may struggle to accurately communicate what they are looking for, leading to
poor requirements, or delivered software that misses the mark. This lack of
understanding and effective collaboration contributes to the formation of
redundancies within organizations, where different functional units create
processes that others already perform.
A common language should create a shared understanding vertically and
horizontally. It would align objectives, facilitate better communications, bridge
cultural differences, and enable conflict resolution. What are the requirements
of this common language? First, since it must support the purpose of the
organization, it has to be oriented in the language of the business. This
eliminates, for instance, technical terminology, you wouldn’t want to state as
a strategy that you’re going to implement artificial intelligence unless you
could convey how it supports your customers, generates revenues, or furthers
the mission. But it does have to be a bridge to cross-functional topics such as
technology, risk, data, and regulators. Lastly, it needs to connect a high-level
view that senior leadership would understand to a low-level view that a single
contributor would understand.
Let’s say that this company has success. Then they realize that they will have
to file taxes, but none of them have the skill set or the time, so they hire
someone for that purpose and have now added the process of
• Calculate tax liabilities
• File taxes
• Pay tax liabilities
This means that they’ve now expanded the organization chart to support the
need to do taxes. Then they purchase tax software for them which is the
beginning of their technology portfolio. The business is doing so well that you
seek out investors, but investors will want financial reports that are based on
solid accounting standards, which leads to them hire an accountant to perform
the following processes:
• Close books
• Create financial report
This accountant will require accounting software. Now they’ve started a
finance functional unit which has tax and accounting processes, an organization
chart, and a technology portfolio.
I can go on, but what you can see is that the needs of the organization to
support its purpose drive the need for processes. Process is core to
organizational capabilities as people are hired, technology is purchased or
built, and risk is incurred, all to support the processes of the business. Plus, a
hierarchy of processes evolves as processes get more complex and lower-
level resources are hired to perform more detailed tasks.
Starting from the top of the organizational chart enables vertical alignment,
allowing for a direct trace of process ownership from the CEO to individual
contributors at all levels.
Organizations often have multiple sources of information that describe
various aspects of their operations, such as application repositories, risk
repositories, product, and channel repositories, and more. However, this data
is usually managed in silos and lacks concrete associations across topics,
hindering horizontal alignment.
The Process Inventory framework establishes a taxonomy that classifies all
processes executed to support the organization’s purpose. This taxonomy
serves as an index for aligning different aspects of the organization through a
single business-oriented language. A modeling team can extract information
from these repositories and create associations, at the process name level or
through creating process models, where operational information intersects
with processes.
This achieves horizontal alignment in three ways. Firstly, it enables functional
teams to precisely identify how their concepts intersect with processes. For
example, by examining the intersection of applications in an application
repository with processes, it becomes possible to determine which applications
support specific processes and even drill down to the level of identifying which
APIs within those applications support specific steps in a process. This is
valuable in identifying the scope and requirements for change management
initiatives. Secondly, it provides transparency to all stakeholders regarding the
activities of each business unit and functional team. This transparency helps
break down silos and facilitates better coordination. Lastly, it promotes a
culture of accountability by identifying points of ownership and fostering
strong collaboration across organizational units where necessary.
This framework is analogous to Google Maps, where you can view Earth from
space, but then you can zoom in to see details of your house and the signs on
your street. Google’s initiative called Ground Truth [13] marries numerous
data sets about our world, such as traffic patterns, restaurant ratings, and
street view images to physical locations. This has revolutionized not only
navigation but also how we interact in the world and how advertisers reach us.
Project scope can be stated in terms of the business processes involved. This
approach ensures certainty of impacts across all resources leveraged by the
business process, including people, processes, controls, data, and technology.
The result is enhanced cost and timeline estimates and better resource
alignment.
The change process would undergo significant changes by anchoring it to this
framework. Framing the contents of SDLC, Agile, and organizational change
management deliverables, such as business requirements, agile user stories,
technology designs, control designs, testing scripts, and user training, using
the Process Inventory taxonomy as the structure will increase coordination
across teams and enhance traceability for those responsible for project
management in these efforts. This also has the benefit of generating better
change status reports by communicating the progress and readiness of
individual processes as the numerator for percent complete reporting.
The efficiencies provided by this framework will enable faster change
implementation with reduced investment needs, thereby freeing up resources
to concentrate on enhancing customer experience and driving product
innovations.
Risk management is strengthened by giving risk professionals a
comprehensive inventory of processes, which will enable them to perform
better risk assessments and create a more accurate inventory of risks across
all risk types. This allows them, in conjunction with their business partners, to
prioritize and design effective controls and ensure regulatory compliance. The
risk operating model will be empowered across all three lines of defense for
stronger effectiveness and coordination such as arming internal audit with
information needed to effectively test controls. This will give senior leaders
and boards confidence that they are getting accurate risk information to make
their strategic decisions.
Key Takeaways
• Creative destruction is driving the digital age through
innovation and technological advancements which are
reshaping business models and industries.
• Digital transformation is the application of digital
capabilities to processes, products, and assets to improve
efficiency, enhance customer value, manage risk, and
uncover new monetization opportunities.
• High failure rate as 70% of such initiatives fail to reach
their goals, which means lost investment, frustrated
stakeholders, lost ground to competitors, unsatisfied
customers, and potentially high regulatory penalties.
• Lack of strategic alignment is the underlying root
cause of failure which hinders collaboration and
organizational focus toward strategic goals.
• A common language is needed to facilitate alignment.
Process, as captured by the Process Inventory framework,
provides the common language.
• Process Inventory enables digital transformation
success and transforms how the organization operates
which leads to operational excellence.
In the next chapter, we will describe the Process Inventory framework, which
includes models, modeling characteristics, metadata, and conceptual
architecture.
CHAPTER
Overview of
the Process
Inventory
Framework
In this chapter, you will explore the components of the Process Inventory
framework. Delve into the significance of this framework in establishing an
ontology to organize organizational knowledge. Understand the methods for
constructing and maintaining a Process Inventory, and explore the conceptual
architecture used to integrate metadata from diverse authoritative sources.
Additionally, you’ll gain insights into related models, such as process models,
customer journeys, and value streams. The framework, with all its associated
components, is critical for structuring and utilizing knowledge effectively
within an organization to deliver transformational value.
BUSINESS ARCHITECTURE
Shortly after that, I was brought in to assist a client in the mortgage industry.
As a mitigation strategy following the 2008 financial crisis, they had decided
to outsource several critical business functions to a third-party provider.
However, the project was in deep trouble, with status reports showing red on
most measures despite a significant investment made in terms of dollars and
resources. The requirements team lacked structure and was not making
progress toward delivering a complete and high-quality product. Additionally,
the business architecture team they had in place was struggling to add value.
Recognizing the need for a strategic pause to recalibrate the approach, the
senior client stakeholders gave us a three-week timeframe.
18 Chapter 2 | Overview of the Process Inventory Framework
Product Subcategory
Interactions
Product
With respect to the fair sex, they are generally lively and
fascinating, and possessed of susceptible feelings, capable of being
converted into strong attachments. These are some of the essential
requisites for forming an amiable, and virtuous character; but, alas!
the good is perverted by the influence of an injudicious and trifling
system of education, extended at most to superficial literary
acquisitions, which barely serve for the dictation of an ungrammatical
billetdoux, or the copying of a song. The most devoted attention is
given to the art of pleasing, and the study of dress, which, with the
auxiliaries of music and embroidery, form the leading occupations of
young French females.
When the grapes are of a bad, meagre kind, the wine-dealers mix
the juice with quicklime, in order to give it a spirit which nature has
denied, or, possibly, to take off acidity.
About this time, Dr. Skirving, an English physician, whom I had the
pleasure of knowing in Edinburgh, and an intimate acquaintance of
Madame M⸺, arrived with a view of establishing himself in
practice at Nice. He had originally become known at this place, in
consequence of having been detained in it by the illness of a friend,
who in an intended voyage from Civita Vecchia to Marseilles,
ruptured a blood-vessel on his lungs, by the exertions of sea-
sickness, and was compelled to make this port, where, after lingering
some months, he died. Pleased with the situation, and at the
solicitations of his friends, he determined to make Nice his
permanent residence, and having arranged his affairs in England,
was now arrived to carry the plan into execution.
The 15th of October now arrived, which, being St. Therese’s day,
was the fête of Madame M⸺, as well as the anniversary of my
birth. The former circumstance it may be necessary to explain. It is
customary in this country to name children after some favourite saint,
to whose especial protection they may thus be supposed to be
committed; and hence, when the annual fête of their patron arrives, it
is made a day of congratulation to themselves.
The dregs which remain after these operations, when dried, are
used as a fuel; particularly for warming, by means of brasieres,
apartments without chimneys.
The summer fruits, as grapes, figs, peaches, &c. were now over,
but we had great stores preserved for the winter’s use. There were,
however, neither oranges nor lemons this season, the unusually
severe frost of the preceding winter having killed all the trees:
throughout France, and about Genoa, most of the olive-trees also
perished; but at Nice they were more fortunate.
The land around the city is divided into small parcels or farms,
seldom consisting of more than twelve or fourteen acres each, and
which are principally covered with vines, olives, and fruit-trees, the
intermediate spaces being filled up with abundance of vegetables,
and small quantities of grain, the chief supply of this important article
being derived from different parts of the Mediterranean.
The proprietor retains the actual possession of the farm, but the
fermier cultivates it, collects its produce, and carries it to market; he
is bound also to plant, every year, a stipulated number of vines, from
three to six hundred, according to the size of the farm; and at his
sole expense to repair the walls and fences. The proprietor provides
him a house, pays the contribution foncier, and incurs half the
expense of manure, and of the animals necessary for carrying on the
various operations of the concern. The proprietor and fermier then
share the produce in equal proportions, except as relates to the
olives, of which the former takes three-fifths.
We now took leave of St. Rosalie; nor could I, without the highest
regret, tear myself away from its rural charms, not least amongst
which was the vine covered alley, “impervious to the noontide ray,”
which had so often offered us delightful shade, and refreshment,
during the most intense atmospheric heats; and where so many
happy moments had glided away in interesting conversation, and the
rational amusement of reading, frequently enlivened by the vocal
powers of Madame M⸺ and her youngest daughter.
Nice is far from being a large city, as I was able to make the tour of
its ramparts in twenty minutes; nor is it an interesting one; the streets
are narrow, and mostly on a level, with the exception of one or two
which lead to a part of the town situated in a hollow, and which have
a step every two or three yards to break the declivity.
Nice produces very fair wines, both red and white; but the most
valuable kind is that named Billit.
The accommodations for bathing are indifferent; the beach is
rough and stony, and there are no machines. On summer evenings,
after it is dark, the females take possession of the beach, on one
side of the entrance of the harbour, and there bathe, while the men
go to a distant point.
There are, however, two sets of warm baths in the town, the one
constructed of marble, the other with copper; the former, situated
near the Place St. Dominico, are long, narrow, and shallow; when in
them, you only want a cover to make a good coffin—the latter, on the
contrary, situated on the ramparts between the bridge and the Place
Victoire, are so short and deep, that although you cannot lie down in
them, you may sit, and have the water up to your chin; in fact they
form excellent boilers, which would serve to stew you down, if
required.
Among the many beautiful walks about Nice, the Terrace ranks
foremost; it is crowded on a summer’s evening, but during the winter
is delightful throughout the whole day, particularly on a Sunday
afternoon, when a military band occasionally attends for an hour or
two. The walks to the Port, and around the ramparts, are also very
agreeable.
Only three good carriage roads will be found at Nice, one leading
to the Var, another to Turin, and the third to Genoa; there is also one
to Villa Franca, but so steep, that many do not like to venture up it;
the preferable way of visiting this latter place, is to row there in a
boat or felucca, and return on foot.
Villa Franca is a small, but strongly fortified town, distant about two
miles from Nice, built at the extremity of a fine harbour, in a situation
admirably adapted for the site of a more important place. It consists
of very indifferent buildings, and its streets are narrow, and
wretchedly paved.
Nice and its environs do not offer a very extensive field to the
naturalist. The surrounding mountains are, however, covered with a
great variety of plants during the whole year; and, of course, the
botanist will find ample amusement. The mineralogy of the
neighbourhood is but limited, the whole of the hills around the city
consisting chiefly of limestone, with some few beds of gypsum. In the
beds of the mountain torrents, portions are occasionally found of
granite, gneiss, clay-slate, flinty-slate, serpentine and feltspar; but
these specimens so small and so much weathered, that it is often
difficult to distinguish them.
A very pretty, but small theatre, has been erected at Nice, which
was not opened for dramatic representations during my residence
there. It was, however, made use of for two grand balls, given by a
select party of the nobles and gentlemen of Nice, to the stranger
residents; we were also entertained with a public concert in it; we
had, besides this, several private amateur concerts, in a large room
appropriated for such occasions, and supported by subscription,
each subscriber being allowed to introduce a certain number of
persons.
On the 3rd of January, the waters of the Paglion came down with
so much force, as to carry away the embankment, raised for the
protection of the workmen employed at the foundation of a new
bridge, just commenced over the river, and which was expected to
require two years to complete.
The coldest day experienced during the season, was on the 20th
of February, but even then, the lowest point at which Reaumur’s
thermometer was noticed, was 1° above freezing point, or equal to
34¼° of Fahrenheit.
After leaving the harbour, the wind was light and variable, and the
water smooth, so that by dint of rowing and sailing, we proceeded at
the rate of three miles an hour. On arriving off the town, and
principality of Monaco, we stood towards the shore, and took on
board three sailors, belonging to a Sardinian frigate, lying at Genoa,
who had been visiting their friends at Monaco, and agreed to work
their passage back to the former place.
After breakfast, the whole of our party, except the Italian lady and
myself, set off on mules for Genoa, we having determined to remain
in hopes of the wind shortly becoming favourable, in which case, we
doubted not, by pursuing our original plan, still to reach Genoa
before them, and avoid a difficult and expensive journey by land.
The wind, which throughout the night had continued fresh, in the
morning became more moderate and favourable; soon after day-light
we weighed anchor, stood out of the harbour, and beat up along
shore during the day, making what sailors call a long leg and a short
one, or perhaps what will be more intelligible, a long tack and a short
one, the wind being three points on the right side of our noses; about
evening it freshened, and was fed by small rain. A Swedish brig
passed us at two p.m. which was running out of the gulf of Genoa,
with a fine fair wind. About eight in the evening, the wind had
increased in such a degree, that the captain thought it necessary to
seek shelter for the night, but it was become so dark, that in running
for a place he had been accustomed to, the vessel took ground,
under the lee of some small uninhabited island. The whole crew,
including himself, now made such a hue-and-cry, that one would
have thought, nothing less than immediate destruction was to be the
result of this mistake; however, we made shift to secure the vessel to
the rocks, with an anchor, and it was fortunate that we succeeded in
effecting this, for the wind soon increased to a tremendous gale, with
heavy rain, which continued through the present night, and the
following day and night also.
It was true that this was Friday, but my fair companion was not in a
situation to think of maigre day, even had it been Vendrédi saint
itself. I believe the influence of the French Revolution, has
contributed materially to lessen the superstitions of the Catholic
countries, which have been exposed to its action. I have heard a
French officer remark, that for his part he had met with a sufficient
number of maigre days during the war, and could now afford no
more, but must live gras to make up for what he had lost. The priests
still contrive to make many women, children, and servants, observe
their ordinances, but the men have ventured, pretty generally, to
throw off their restraint.
We rose with day-break, and finding the wind still adverse, after
settling with the captain, went on shore, and taking places in the
voiture to Genoa, determined no longer to be the sport of the winds.
There were but two vacancies in the coach, and finding our anxiety
to proceed with it, the conducteur would fain have taken advantage
of it, but the lady managed the affair well, for offering what she knew
to be the usual sum, viz. five francs for each of us; on their refusal to
accept it, under the plea that there was no other coach that day, we
walked off, and pretended to be indifferent about it: this manœuvre
brought them to, and before we had proceeded the length of a street,
the conducteur came running after us, to say that he was willing to
take us; after this, however, we had some trouble to get our luggage
to the carriage, and were obliged to walk part of the way out of town,
in doing which we were followed by the most importunate host of
beggars I had ever witnessed in my life; my companion was so
confused that she could with difficulty count out her money to pay
the porters, &c. At length our supplicants dropped off, one by one,
until we literally out-walked them all.
The succeeding day was the last of the Carnival, and a great
number of people were parading the streets masked, and in all the
fantastic garb of the season; the business, however, appeared to be
kept up with more spirit than at Toulouse on the preceding winter. In
the course of the evening a person with whom I was walking
addressed a female mask, who said she was cook in a gentleman’s
family, and that she must hasten home to wash the dishes; on
parting, we induced her to shake hands with us; and if I am a judge
of the affair, I pronounce that her hand had never been in dish-water,
for a prettier formed, or more delicate one, I never touched in my life.
In the evening, the festival concluded with masked-balls at the
theatres, and other amusements.
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