Re: Fillfactor for GIN indexes

On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 2:37 AM, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 28, 2014 at 4:27 AM, Alexander Korotkov
> <aekorotkov@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 8:12 AM, Michael Paquier <michael.paquier@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> Please find attached a simple patch adding fillfactor as storage parameter
>>> for GIN indexes. The default value is the same as the one currently aka 100
>>> to have the pages completely packed when a GIN index is created.
>>
>>
>> That's not true. Let us discuss it a little bit.
>> [blah discussion]
That's quite a nice explanation. Thanks!

>> My summary is following:
>> 1) In order to have fully correct support of fillfactor in GIN we need to
>> rewrite GIN build algorithm.
>> 2) Without rewriting GIN build algorithm, not much can be done with entry
>> tree. However, you can implement some heuristics.
TBH, I am not really planning to rewrite the whole code.

>> 3) You definitely need to touch code that selects ratio of split in
>> dataPlaceToPageLeaf (starting with if (!btree->isBuild)).
OK I see, so for a split we need to have a calculation based on the
fillfactor, with 75% by default.

>> 4) GIN data pages are always compressed excepts pg_upgraded indexes from
>> pre-9.4. Take care about it in following code.
>>   if (GinPageIsCompressed(page))
>>   freespace = GinDataLeafPageGetFreeSpace(page);
>> + else if (btree->isBuild)
>> + freespace = BLCKSZ * (100 - fillfactor) / 100;
Hm. Simply reversing both conditions is fine, no?

> This is a very interesting explanation; thanks for writing it up!
> It does leave me wondering why anyone would want fillfactor for GIN at
> all, even if they were willing to rewrite the build algorithm.
Based on the explanation of Alexander, the current GIN code fills in a
page at 75% for a split, and was doing even 50/50 pre-9.4 if I recall
correctly. IMO a higher fillfactor makes sense for a GIN index that
gets less random updates, no?

I am attaching an updated patch, with the default fillfactor value at
75%, and with the page split code using the fillfactor rate.
Thoughts?
--
Michael