Re: Manipulating complex types as non-contiguous structures in-memory

Jim Nasby <Jim.Nasby@BlueTreble.com> writes:
> On 2/10/15 5:19 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
>> What do you mean by non-variant?

> Ugh, sorry, brainfart. I meant to say non-varlena.

> I can't think of any non-varlena types we'd want this for, but maybe 
> someone else can think of a case. If there is a use-case I wouldn't 
> handle it with this patch, but we'd want to consider it...

There isn't any practical way to interpose TOAST pointers for non-varlena
types, since we make no assumptions about the bit contents of fixed-length
types.  But I'm having a hard time thinking of a fixed-length type in
which you'd have any need for a deserialized representation, either.
I think restricting this feature to varlena types is just fine.
        regards, tom lane