Re: Pluggable Indexes (was Re: rmgr hooks (v2))

Heikki Linnakangas wrote:
> Simon Riggs wrote:
> > Right now we've got a variety of index types that are *not* flourishing
> > (hash, bitmap, grouped).
> 
> Hash indexam has been in core for ages, and yet no-one has bothered to 
> implement WAL logging. If I've understood correctly, it has been now 
> been revamped in 8.4 so that there's a performance use case to use it. I 
> wouldn't be surprised if someone (GSoC?) implements WAL logging for it 
> for 8.5.
> 
> Bitmap indexes required significant changes to the rest of the system, 
> the indexam API in particular.
> 
> By "grouped", I presume you mean my grouped index tuples patch, aka 
> clustered indexes. That too required changes to the indexam API, and 
> even if it didn't, I can guarantee that I wouldn't spend any more time 
> on it than I do now (= 0) if it was on pgfoundry.
> 
> > If we allow them to develop as separate
> > projects, then whenever they are ready they can be used with particular
> > releases.
> 
> Developing a new indexam is not something you do over the weekend. It's 
> a long way from design to an implementation robust enough that anyone 
> cares about crash recovery. Short-circuiting the release cycle with a 
> plugin won't get you a production-ready indexam much sooner.

Agreed.

--  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB
http://enterprisedb.com
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