Re: Partitioning option for COPY

Simon Riggs wrote:
> ...Read my detailed comments in response to Kedar's patch and post
> comments on that thread to say you didn't agree with that proposal and
> that you were thinking of another way entirely.
Useful background here is:

http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Table_partitioning
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2008-01/msg00413.php
http://archives.postgresql.org/message-id/bd8134a40906080702s96c90a9q3bbb581b9bd0d5d7@mail.gmail.com
http://archives.postgresql.org/message-id/1247564358.11347.1308.camel@ebony.2ndQuadrant

The basic problem here is that Emmanuel and Aster developed a useful 
answer to one of the more pressing implementation details needed here, 
but did so without being involved in the much larger discussion of how 
to implement general, more automated partitioning in PostgreSQL that (as 
you can see from the date of the first links there) has been going on 
for years already.  What we did wrong as a community is not more 
explicitly tell Emmanuel the above when he first submitted code a few 
months ago, before he'd invested more time on a subset implementation 
that was unlikely to be committed.  As I already commented upthread, I 
was just happy to see coding progress being made on part of the design 
that nobody had hacked on before to my knowledge; I didn't consider then 
how Emmanuel was going to be disappointed by the slow rate that code 
would be assimilated into the design going on in this area.

What would probably be helpful here is to take the mess of raw data 
above and turn it into a simpler partitioning roadmap.  There's a stack 
of useful patches here, multiple contributors who have gotten familiar 
with the implementation details required, and enough time left that it's 
possible to pull something together in time for 8.5--but only if 
everyone is clear on exactly what direction to push toward.  I'm going 
to reread the history here myself and see if I can write something 
helpful here.

-- 
Greg Smith    2ndQuadrant   Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support
greg@2ndQuadrant.com  www.2ndQuadrant.com