Create hooks to let a loadable plugin monitor (or even replace) the planner

Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

Commit: 604ffd280b955100e5fc24649ee4d42a6f3ebf35
Author: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Date: 2007-05-25T17:54:25Z
Releases: 8.3.0
Create hooks to let a loadable plugin monitor (or even replace) the planner
and/or create plans for hypothetical situations; in particular, investigate
plans that would be generated using hypothetical indexes.  This is a
heavily-rewritten version of the hooks proposed by Gurjeet Singh for his
Index Advisor project.  In this formulation, the index advisor can be
entirely a loadable module instead of requiring a significant part to be
in the core backend, and plans can be generated for hypothetical indexes
without requiring the creation and rolling-back of system catalog entries.

The index advisor patch as-submitted is not compatible with these hooks,
but it needs significant work anyway due to other 8.2-to-8.3 planner
changes.  With these hooks in the core backend, development of the advisor
can proceed as a pgfoundry project.

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