Re: Remaining beta blockers

Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:

> We discussed this around the beginning of CF4.  For some reason
> (which I didn't quite understand at the time), the consensus was
> that creating a "matview last updated" timestamp was not
> implementable for 9.3 and would need to wait for 9.4.

The reason was that the start of CF4 was deemed too late in the
development cycle to be trying to design what that should look
like.  No sooner had you suggested that one column than someone
suggested two others which might also be useful, and it seemed to
me that it would be hard to get it right before we had a better
sense of what incremental maintenance based on the view declaration
would look like.  So, as I recall it, the consensus developed
around the simplest possible test, which from the user perspective
was hidden behind a function, should be used for this release.

> Again, all of this points to additional columns, or at least
> relopts, in pg_class.  Why is that off the table?

That was deemed to be incompatible with unlogged matviews, which
some didn't want to give up in this initial release.

Basically, what this patch aims at is more or less what some other
databases had in their initial releases of materialized views 10 to
20 years ago.  Other products have built on those foundations with
each major release.  I was hoping we could do the same.  We are not
going to reach parity on this with any other major database product
in one release, or probably even two or three.

I didn't dig back through all the threads to confirm these
recollections, so take them with a grain of salt.  The one thing I
am sure of is that they are a rehash of discussions which go back
to before the start of CF3.  Only with more tone and urgency.

--
Kevin Grittner
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company