SP-GiST confusing introductory paragraph
От | PG Doc comments form |
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Тема | SP-GiST confusing introductory paragraph |
Дата | |
Msg-id | 169742152620.169914.10779838715602285062@wrigleys.postgresql.org обсуждение исходный текст |
Ответы |
Re: SP-GiST confusing introductory paragraph
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Список | pgsql-docs |
The following documentation comment has been logged on the website: Page: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/spgist-intro.html Description: I'm confused by this paragraph: > These popular data structures were originally developed for in-memory usage. In main memory, they are usually designed as a set of dynamically allocated nodes linked by pointers. This is not suitable for direct storing on disk, since these chains of pointers can be rather long which would require too many disk accesses. In contrast, disk-based data structures should have a high fanout to minimize I/O. The challenge addressed by SP-GiST is to map search tree nodes to disk pages in such a way that a search need access only a few disk pages, even if it traverses many nodes. In particular, "These popular datastructures" is ambiguous -- based on how the previous paragraph ends, it sounds like the "popular datastructures" or SP-GiSTs, but then it goes on to say they were designed for in-memory, and then it mentions that SP-GiST's space partitioning (with high fanout) is more appropriate to minimize disk access. I think maybe the solution here would be to replace "These popular data structures" with something like "Classic Postgres indexes such as B-tree indexes..." or something like that. Also, I think a short parenthetical definition of "fanout" would be useful here, something like "high fanout (i.e. where each node has a potentially large number of child nodes that reside in the same disk page)". Took me some googling to realize what fanout meant in this context. Best, Alex
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