Re: patch: SQL/MED(FDW) DDL

On 15/09/10 21:21, Robert Haas wrote:
> I wonder if we might not think of the foreign data wrapper problem as
> an instance of an even more general problem.  Right now, we have
> semi-pluggable index access methods - it's probably not quite possible
> to implement one as a standalone module because of XLOG, and maybe
> other reasons, but at least there's some abstraction layer there.
> Perhaps we should be thinking about a similar facility of table-access
> methods.  What if someone wants to implement column-oriented storage,
> or index-organized tables, or or tables that are really slow under
> heavy write loads but can instantaneously compute SELECT COUNT(*) FROM
> table, or mauve-colored tables with magic pixie dust?  I don't want to
> raise the bar for this project to the point where we can never get it
> off the ground, but if there's a way to avoid baking in the assumption
> that only foreign tables can ever have special capabilities, that
> might be valuable.

Well, you could implement all that as a foreign data wrappers. Tables 
made out of pixie dust feels pretty foreign to me ;-).

--   Heikki Linnakangas  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com