Re: Index AM change proposals, redux

On Wed, 2008-04-23 at 12:07 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Simon Riggs <simon@2ndquadrant.com> writes:
> > I don't see the "returns index keys" idea as being killed by or killing
> > this concept. Returning keys is valid and useful when we can, but there
> > are other considerations that, in some use cases, will be a dominant
> > factor.
> 
> The patch as-submitted was a killer for the concept, because it
> automatically discarded information and there was no way to prevent
> that.

Understood.

> To be acceptable, a GIT patch would have to be optional and it
> would have to expose in the catalogs whether a given index was lossy
> in this way or not (so that the planner could know whether a plan based
> on returning index keys would work).

Would you see it as a separate index type, or a modification of the
b-tree (with option enabled via a "storage parameter")? If it was the
latter, then perhaps there could be a future for the GIT patch after
all.

--  Simon Riggs 2ndQuadrant  http://www.2ndQuadrant.com