v3-0001-Correct-GiST-documentation-about-compressed-value.patch
text/x-diff
Filename: v3-0001-Correct-GiST-documentation-about-compressed-value.patch
Type: text/x-diff
Part: 0
Patch
Format: unified
Series: patch v3-0001
| File | + | − |
|---|---|---|
| doc/src/sgml/gist.sgml | 21 | 7 |
| src/backend/access/gist/README | 8 | 1 |
diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/gist.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/gist.sgml
index 5c0a0c48bab..bedbc84d7b0 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/gist.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/gist.sgml
@@ -273,13 +273,9 @@ CREATE INDEX ON my_table USING GIST (my_inet_column inet_ops);
index will depend on the <function>penalty</function> and <function>picksplit</function>
methods.
Two optional methods are <function>compress</function> and
- <function>decompress</function>, which allow an index to have internal tree data of
- a different type than the data it indexes. The leaves are to be of the
- indexed data type, while the other tree nodes can be of any C struct (but
- you still have to follow <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> data type rules here,
- see about <literal>varlena</literal> for variable sized data). If the tree's
- internal data type exists at the SQL level, the <literal>STORAGE</literal> option
- of the <command>CREATE OPERATOR CLASS</command> command can be used.
+ <function>decompress</function>, which allow an index to store keys that
+ are of a different type than the data it indexes, or are a compressed
+ representation of that type.
The optional eighth method is <function>distance</function>, which is needed
if the operator class wishes to support ordered scans (nearest-neighbor
searches). The optional ninth method <function>fetch</function> is needed if the
@@ -484,6 +480,24 @@ my_union(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
in the index without modification.
</para>
+ <para>
+ Use the <literal>STORAGE</literal> option of the <command>CREATE
+ OPERATOR CLASS</command> command to define the data type that is
+ stored in the index, if it is different from the data type being
+ indexed. Be aware however that the <literal>STORAGE</literal> data
+ type is only used to define the physical properties of the index
+ entries (their <replaceable>typlen</replaceable>,
+ <replaceable>typbyval</replaceable>,
+ and <replaceable>typalign</replaceable> attributes). What is
+ actually in the index datums is under the control of the
+ <function>compress</function> and <function>decompress</function>
+ methods, so long as the stored datums fit those properties. It is
+ allowed for <function>compress</function> to produce different
+ representations for leaf keys than for keys on higher-level index
+ pages, so long as both representations fit
+ the <literal>STORAGE</literal> data type.
+ </para>
+
<para>
The <acronym>SQL</acronym> declaration of the function must look like this:
diff --git a/src/backend/access/gist/README b/src/backend/access/gist/README
index 76e0e11f228..75445b07455 100644
--- a/src/backend/access/gist/README
+++ b/src/backend/access/gist/README
@@ -10,9 +10,13 @@ GiST stands for Generalized Search Tree. It was introduced in the seminal paper
Jeffrey F. Naughton, Avi Pfeffer:
http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/postgres/gist/papers/gist.ps
+
+Concurrency support was described in "Concurrency and Recovery in Generalized
+Search Trees", 1997, Marcel Kornacker, C. Mohan, Joseph M. Hellerstein:
+
https://dsf.berkeley.edu/papers/sigmod97-gist.pdf
-and implemented by J. Hellerstein and P. Aoki in an early version of
+GiST was implemented by J. Hellerstein and P. Aoki in an early version of
PostgreSQL (more details are available from The GiST Indexing Project
at Berkeley at http://gist.cs.berkeley.edu/). As a "university"
project it had a limited number of features and was in rare use.
@@ -55,6 +59,9 @@ The original algorithms were modified in several ways:
it is now a single-pass algorithm.
* Since the papers were theoretical, some details were omitted and we
had to find out ourself how to solve some specific problems.
+* The 1997 paper above (but not the 1995 one) states that leaf pages should
+ store the original key. While that can be done in PostgreSQL, it is
+ also possible to use a compressed representation in leaf pages.
Because of the above reasons, we have revised the interaction of GiST
core and PostgreSQL WAL system. Moreover, we encountered (and solved)