Re: heap metapages

On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 12:56 PM, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
> At dinner on Friday night at PGCon, the end of the table that included
> Tom Lane, Stephen Frost, and myself got to talking about the idea of
> including some kind of metapage in every relation, including heap
> relations.  At least some index relations already have something like
> this (cf _bt_initmetapage, _hash_metapinit).  I believe that adding
> this for all relations, including heaps, would allow us to make
> improvements in several areas.

The first thing that jumps to mind is: why can't the metapage be
extended to span multiple pages if necessary?  I've often wondered why
the visibility map isn't stored within the heap itself...

merlin