Speed up COALESCE significantly (#120139)

```
                      before              after
     (operation)   Score   Error       Score   Error  Units
 coalesce_2_noop  75.949 ± 3.961  ->   0.010 ±  0.001 ns/op  99.9%
coalesce_2_eager  99.299 ± 6.959  ->   4.292 ±  0.227 ns/op  95.7%
 coalesce_2_lazy 113.118 ± 5.747  ->  26.746 ±  0.954 ns/op  76.4%
```

We tend to advise folks that "COALESCE is faster than CASE", but, as of
8.16.0/#112295 that wasn't the true. I was working with someone a few
days ago to port a scripted_metric aggregation to ESQL and we saw
COALESCE taking ~60% of the time. That won't do.

The trouble is that CASE and COALESCE have to be *lazy*, meaning that
operations like:
```
COALESCE(a, 1 / b)
```
should never emit a warning if `a` is not `null`, even if `b` is `0`. In
8.16/#112295 CASE grew an optimization where it could operate non-lazily
if it was flagged as "safe". This brings a similar optimization to
COALESCE, see it above as "case_2_eager", a 95.7% improvement.

It also brings and arguably more important optimization - entire-block
execution for COALESCE. The schort version is that, if the first
parameter of COALESCE returns no nulls we can return it without doing
anything lazily. There are a few more cases, but the upshot is that
COALESCE is pretty much *free* in cases where long strings of results
are `null` or not `null`. That's the `coalesce_2_noop` line.

Finally, when there mixed null and non-null values we were using a
single builder with some fairly inefficient paths. This specializes them
per type and skips some slow null-checking where possible. That's the
`coalesce_2_lazy` result, a more modest 76.4%.

NOTE: These %s of improvements on COALESCE itself, or COALESCE with some load-overhead operators like `+`. If COALESCE isn't taking a *ton* time in your query don't get particularly excited about this. It's fun though.

Closes #119953

Author: nik9000

.gitattributes

@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@ x-pack/plugin/esql/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/xpack/esql/parser/*.interp li
 x-pack/plugin/esql/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/xpack/esql/parser/EsqlBaseLexer*.java linguist-generated=true
 x-pack/plugin/esql/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/xpack/esql/parser/EsqlBaseParser*.java linguist-generated=true
 x-pack/plugin/esql/src/main/generated/** linguist-generated=true
+x-pack/plugin/esql/src/main/generated-src/** linguist-generated=true
 
 # ESQL functions docs are autogenerated. More information at `docs/reference/esql/functions/README.md`
 docs/reference/esql/functions/*/** linguist-generated=true

benchmarks/README.md

@@ -126,9 +126,12 @@ exit
 Grab the async profiler from https://github.com/jvm-profiling-tools/async-profiler
 and run `prof async` like so:
 ```
-gradlew -p benchmarks/ run --args 'LongKeyedBucketOrdsBenchmark.multiBucket -prof "async:libPath=/home/nik9000/Downloads/tmp/async-profiler-1.8.3-linux-x64/build/libasyncProfiler.so;dir=/tmp/prof;output=flamegraph"'
+gradlew -p benchmarks/ run --args 'LongKeyedBucketOrdsBenchmark.multiBucket -prof "async:libPath=/home/nik9000/Downloads/async-profiler-3.0-29ee888-linux-x64/lib/libasyncProfiler.so;dir=/tmp/prof;output=flamegraph"'
 ```
 
+Note: As of January 2025 the latest release of async profiler doesn't work
+      with our JDK but the nightly is fine.
+
 If you are on Mac, this'll warn you that you downloaded the shared library from
 the internet. You'll need to go to settings and allow it to run.
 

benchmarks/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/benchmark/compute/operator/EvalBenchmark.java

@@ -38,6 +38,7 @@
 import org.elasticsearch.xpack.esql.expression.function.scalar.date.DateTrunc;
 import org.elasticsearch.xpack.esql.expression.function.scalar.math.Abs;
 import org.elasticsearch.xpack.esql.expression.function.scalar.multivalue.MvMin;
+import org.elasticsearch.xpack.esql.expression.function.scalar.nulls.Coalesce;
 import org.elasticsearch.xpack.esql.expression.function.scalar.string.RLike;
 import org.elasticsearch.xpack.esql.expression.predicate.operator.arithmetic.Add;
 import org.elasticsearch.xpack.esql.expression.predicate.operator.comparison.Equals;
@@ -96,6 +97,9 @@ public class EvalBenchmark {
             "add_double",
             "case_1_eager",
             "case_1_lazy",
+            "coalesce_2_noop",
+            "coalesce_2_eager",
+            "coalesce_2_lazy",
             "date_trunc",
             "equal_to_const",
             "long_equal_to_long",
@@ -142,8 +146,34 @@ private static EvalOperator.ExpressionEvaluator evaluator(String operation) {
                     lhs = new Add(Source.EMPTY, lhs, new Literal(Source.EMPTY, 1L, DataType.LONG));
                     rhs = new Add(Source.EMPTY, rhs, new Literal(Source.EMPTY, 1L, DataType.LONG));
                 }
-                yield EvalMapper.toEvaluator(FOLD_CONTEXT, new Case(Source.EMPTY, condition, List.of(lhs, rhs)), layout(f1, f2))
-                    .get(driverContext);
+                EvalOperator.ExpressionEvaluator evaluator = EvalMapper.toEvaluator(
+                    FOLD_CONTEXT,
+                    new Case(Source.EMPTY, condition, List.of(lhs, rhs)),
+                    layout(f1, f2)
+                ).get(driverContext);
+                String desc = operation.endsWith("lazy") ? "CaseLazyEvaluator" : "CaseEagerEvaluator";
+                if (evaluator.toString().contains(desc) == false) {
+                    throw new IllegalArgumentException("Evaluator was [" + evaluator + "] but expected one containing [" + desc + "]");
+                }
+                yield evaluator;
+            }
+            case "coalesce_2_noop", "coalesce_2_eager", "coalesce_2_lazy" -> {
+                FieldAttribute f1 = longField();
+                FieldAttribute f2 = longField();
+                Expression lhs = f1;
+                if (operation.endsWith("lazy")) {
+                    lhs = new Add(Source.EMPTY, lhs, new Literal(Source.EMPTY, 1L, DataType.LONG));
+                }
+                EvalOperator.ExpressionEvaluator evaluator = EvalMapper.toEvaluator(
+                    FOLD_CONTEXT,
+                    new Coalesce(Source.EMPTY, lhs, List.of(f2)),
+                    layout(f1, f2)
+                ).get(driverContext);
+                String desc = operation.endsWith("lazy") ? "CoalesceLazyEvaluator" : "CoalesceEagerEvaluator";
+                if (evaluator.toString().contains(desc) == false) {
+                    throw new IllegalArgumentException("Evaluator was [" + evaluator + "] but expected one containing [" + desc + "]");
+                }
+                yield evaluator;
             }
             case "date_trunc" -> {
                 FieldAttribute timestamp = new FieldAttribute(
@@ -260,6 +290,38 @@ private static void checkExpected(String operation, Page actual) {
                     }
                 }
             }
+            case "coalesce_2_noop" -> {
+                LongVector f1 = actual.<LongBlock>getBlock(0).asVector();
+                LongVector result = actual.<LongBlock>getBlock(2).asVector();
+                for (int i = 0; i < BLOCK_LENGTH; i++) {
+                    long expected = f1.getLong(i);
+                    if (result.getLong(i) != expected) {
+                        throw new AssertionError("[" + operation + "] expected [" + expected + "] but was [" + result.getLong(i) + "]");
+                    }
+                }
+            }
+            case "coalesce_2_eager" -> {
+                LongBlock f1 = actual.<LongBlock>getBlock(0);
+                LongVector f2 = actual.<LongBlock>getBlock(1).asVector();
+                LongVector result = actual.<LongBlock>getBlock(2).asVector();
+                for (int i = 0; i < BLOCK_LENGTH; i++) {
+                    long expected = i % 5 == 0 ? f2.getLong(i) : f1.getLong(f1.getFirstValueIndex(i));
+                    if (result.getLong(i) != expected) {
+                        throw new AssertionError("[" + operation + "] expected [" + expected + "] but was [" + result.getLong(i) + "]");
+                    }
+                }
+            }
+            case "coalesce_2_lazy" -> {
+                LongBlock f1 = actual.<LongBlock>getBlock(0);
+                LongVector f2 = actual.<LongBlock>getBlock(1).asVector();
+                LongVector result = actual.<LongBlock>getBlock(2).asVector();
+                for (int i = 0; i < BLOCK_LENGTH; i++) {
+                    long expected = i % 5 == 0 ? f2.getLong(i) : f1.getLong(f1.getFirstValueIndex(i)) + 1;
+                    if (result.getLong(i) != expected) {
+                        throw new AssertionError("[" + operation + "] expected [" + expected + "] but was [" + result.getLong(i) + "]");
+                    }
+                }
+            }
             case "date_trunc" -> {
                 LongVector v = actual.<LongBlock>getBlock(1).asVector();
                 long oneDay = TimeValue.timeValueHours(24).millis();
@@ -304,7 +366,7 @@ private static void checkExpected(String operation, Page actual) {
                     }
                 }
             }
-            default -> throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
+            default -> throw new UnsupportedOperationException(operation);
         }
     }
 
@@ -324,7 +386,7 @@ private static Page page(String operation) {
                 }
                 yield new Page(builder.build());
             }
-            case "case_1_eager", "case_1_lazy" -> {
+            case "case_1_eager", "case_1_lazy", "coalesce_2_noop" -> {
                 var f1 = blockFactory.newLongBlockBuilder(BLOCK_LENGTH);
                 var f2 = blockFactory.newLongBlockBuilder(BLOCK_LENGTH);
                 for (int i = 0; i < BLOCK_LENGTH; i++) {
@@ -333,6 +395,19 @@ private static Page page(String operation) {
                 }
                 yield new Page(f1.build(), f2.build());
             }
+            case "coalesce_2_eager", "coalesce_2_lazy" -> {
+                var f1 = blockFactory.newLongBlockBuilder(BLOCK_LENGTH);
+                var f2 = blockFactory.newLongBlockBuilder(BLOCK_LENGTH);
+                for (int i = 0; i < BLOCK_LENGTH; i++) {
+                    if (i % 5 == 0) {
+                        f1.appendNull();
+                    } else {
+                        f1.appendLong(i);
+                    }
+                    f2.appendLong(-i);
+                }
+                yield new Page(f1.build(), f2.build());
+            }
             case "long_equal_to_long" -> {
                 var lhs = blockFactory.newLongBlockBuilder(BLOCK_LENGTH);
                 var rhs = blockFactory.newLongBlockBuilder(BLOCK_LENGTH);

x-pack/plugin/esql/build.gradle

@@ -348,4 +348,31 @@ tasks.named('stringTemplates').configure {
     it.inputFile =  inInputFile
     it.outputFile = "org/elasticsearch/xpack/esql/expression/predicate/operator/comparison/InBytesRefEvaluator.java"
   }
+
+  File coalesceInputFile = file("src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/xpack/esql/expression/function/scalar/nulls/X-CoalesceEvaluator.java.st")
+  template {
+    it.properties = booleanProperties
+    it.inputFile =  coalesceInputFile
+    it.outputFile = "org/elasticsearch/xpack/esql/expression/function/scalar/nulls/CoalesceBooleanEvaluator.java"
+  }
+  template {
+    it.properties = intProperties
+    it.inputFile =  coalesceInputFile
+    it.outputFile = "org/elasticsearch/xpack/esql/expression/function/scalar/nulls/CoalesceIntEvaluator.java"
+  }
+  template {
+    it.properties = longProperties
+    it.inputFile =  coalesceInputFile
+    it.outputFile = "org/elasticsearch/xpack/esql/expression/function/scalar/nulls/CoalesceLongEvaluator.java"
+  }
+  template {
+    it.properties = doubleProperties
+    it.inputFile =  coalesceInputFile
+    it.outputFile = "org/elasticsearch/xpack/esql/expression/function/scalar/nulls/CoalesceDoubleEvaluator.java"
+  }
+  template {
+    it.properties = bytesRefProperties
+    it.inputFile =  coalesceInputFile
+    it.outputFile = "org/elasticsearch/xpack/esql/expression/function/scalar/nulls/CoalesceBytesRefEvaluator.java"
+  }
 }