Re: Marking indexes out of date (WAS: loading data, creating

Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 08, 2006 at 12:49:30PM -0800, Glen Parker wrote:
>> I'd like to see a general way to take indexes off line without actually
>> losing their definitions.  For example, something like "ALTER TABLE [EN
>> | DIS] ABLE INDEXES", "ALTER INDEX [EN | DIS] ABLE", etc.  This could
>> also be used internally when a backend encounters an error
>> reading/writing an index.  Rather than refusing to execute queries, it
>> could just ignore indexes it knows are disabled or bad in some way and
>> re-plan as needed.
>
> One issue would be that even disabled indexes would need to be updated
> when there are new rows. If you don't update the index when it's
> disabled, then re-enabling will essentially need to rebuild the index.


That's what I had in mind.  You could just as easily blow away the index
file(s).  It's just that I don't want it to toss the index *definition*.

To continued to update such an index would be to completely negate the
benefit of disabling it!

-Glen