Re: Index Skip Scan

Hi James,

On 6/13/19 11:40 PM, James Coleman wrote:
> I've previously noted upthread (along with several others), that I
> don't see a good reason to limit this new capability to index only
> scans. In addition to the reasons upthread, this also prevents using
> the new feature on physical replicas since index only scans require
> visibility map (IIRC) information that isn't safe to make assumptions
> about on a replica.
> 
> That being said, it strikes me that this likely indicates an existing
> architecture issue. I was discussing the problem at PGCon with Andres
> and Heiki with respect to an index scan variation I've been working on
> myself. In short, it's not clear to me why we want index only scans
> and index scans to be entirely separate nodes, rather than optional
> variations within a broader index scan node. The problem becomes even
> more clear as we continue to add additional variants that lie on
> different axis, since we end up with an ever multiplying number of
> combinations.
> 
> In that discussion no one could remember why it'd been done that way,
> but I'm planning to try to find the relevant threads in the archives
> to see if there's anything in particular blocking combining them.
> 
> I generally dislike gating improvements like this on seemingly
> tangentially related refactors, but I will make the observation that
> adding the skip scan on top of such a refactored index scan node would
> make this a much more obvious and complete win.
>

Thanks for your feedback !

> As I noted to Jesper at PGCon I'm happy to review the code in detail
> also, but likely won't get to it until later this week or next week at
> the earliest.
> 
> Jesper: Is there anything still on your list of things to change about
> the patch? Or would now be a good time to look hard at the code?
> 

It would be valuable to have test cases for your use-cases which works 
now, or should work.

I revived Thomas' patch because it covered our use-cases and saw it as a 
much needed feature.

Thanks again !

Best regards,
  Jesper