Simon Riggs <simon@2ndQuadrant.com> writes:
> We only consider merge joins if the join uses operators with oprcanmerge=true.
> We only consider hash joins if the join uses operators with oprcanhash=true
> So it seems reasonable to have a way to define/declare what is
> possible and what is not. But my take is that adding a new column to
> pg_operator for every CustomJoin node is probably out of the question,
> hence my suggestion to list the operators we know it can work with.
For what that's worth, I'm not sure that either the oprcanmerge or
oprcanhash columns really pull their weight. We could dispense with both
at the cost of doing some wasted lookups in pg_amop. (Perhaps we should
replace them with a single "oprisequality" column, which would amount to
a hint that it's worth looking for hash or merge properties, or for other
equality-ish properties in future.)
So I think something comparable to an operator class is indeed a better
approach than adding more columns to pg_operator. Other than the
connection to pg_am, you could pretty nearly just use the operator class
infrastructure as-is for a lot of operator-property things like this.
regards, tom lane