Re: Using quicksort for every external sort run

On Sun, Dec 6, 2015 at 4:25 PM, Peter Geoghegan <pg@heroku.com> wrote:

> Maybe we should consider trying to get patch 0002 (the memory
> pool/merge patch) committed first, something Greg Stark suggested
> privately. That might actually be an easier way of integrating this
> work, since it changes nothing about the algorithm we use for merging
> (it only improves memory locality), and so is really an independent
> piece of work (albeit one that makes a huge overall difference due to
> the other patches increasing the time spent merging in absolute terms,
> and especially as a proportion of the total).

I have a question about the terminology used in this patch.  What is a
tuple proper?  What is it in contradistinction to?  I would think that
a tuple which is located in its own palloc'ed space is the "proper"
one, leaving a tuple allocated in the bulk memory pool to be
called...something else.  I don't know what the
non-judgmental-sounding antonym of postpositive "proper" is.

Also, if I am reading this correctly, when we refill a pool from a
logical tape we still transform each tuple as it is read from the disk
format to the memory format.  This inflates the size quite a bit, at
least for single-datum tuples.  If we instead just read the disk
format directly into the pool, and converted them into the in-memory
format when each tuple came due for the merge heap, would that destroy
the locality of reference you are seeking to gain?

Cheers,

Jeff