[Developers] Bizarre timeout

[James Pearce]

This query is quick and effective:

{
  "qname":{
    "query":[{
      "limit":20,
      "name":null,
      "name~=":"^i*",
      "sort":"name",
      "type":"/film/film"
    }]
  }
}


This query times out (stats below):

{
  "qname":{
    "query":[{
      "limit":20,
      "name":null,
      "name~=":"^j*",
      "sort":"name",
      "type":"/film/film"
    }]
  }
}

Yes, that's right... only the initial letter has changed. So what is so bad
about films starting with "J" compared to films starting with "I"? :-)

Both work equally well without "sort", incidentally.

How can I work around it? (I really want sort to be in the query since I
will be using cursors for paging). Or is this a bug?

Help really appreciated.

James

-----

Timeout message:

{
  "status": "200 OK",
  "code": "/api/status/ok",
  "qname": {
    "code": "/api/status/error", 
    "messages": [
      {
        "info": {
          "host": "graph02.p01.sfo1.metaweb.com", 
          "detail": [
            "timed out"
          ], 
          "timeout": 8.0, 
          "port": 8100
        }, 
        "message": "Query timeout", 
        "code": "/api/status/error/mql/timeout"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Stats:
request time: undefined ms

X-Metaweb-Cost:
dt=8.026, nreqs=3, tr=0.004, tu=0.0, ts=0.004, pr=0, pf=0, dw=0, dr=130,
in=27, ir=2, iw=0, va=196, te=0.005, tg=0.0019199848175,
tf=0.00289082527161, tm=0.00298404693604, cr=1, cm=1, ch=0, lr=1, lm=0, lh=1

X-Metaweb-TID:
cache;cache03.p01.sfo1:8101;2007-11-17T21:59:55Z;0003