Re: Proposal: Global Index for PostgreSQL

Global Indexes is a very interesting functionality that has both significant advantages

and drawbacks, and the community seems not ready to accept it without very strong

motivation.

There was a more recent approach to Global index problem [1], please check it out.

I've read you proposal and have several questions:

1) New catalog table with global index partitions would immediately affect interaction

with user tables with global indexes because of corresponding locks that should be

taken for [in]validation and attach/detach operations, this should be investigated;

2) Changing relation OIDs (by, say, vacuum full) would immediately result in index

inconsistency, what do you suppose to do with internal processes that could change

relation OIDs? Also this question 

3) Would single sort space be enough for a more typical case when we have

hundreds of partitions with hundreds of millions records in each? It is a normal

production case for partitioned tables.

4) Update-heavy partitioned tables that should run vacuum frequently. Significant

vacuum slowdown would result in going beyond SLAs without corresponding

significant improvements.

[1] Global Unique Index