Horton

Re: [HACKERS] Custom compression methods

Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com>

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From: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com>
To: Ildus Kurbangaliev <i.kurbangaliev@postgrespro.ru>
Cc: Tomas Vondra <tomas.vondra@2ndquadrant.com>, Евгений Шишкин <itparanoia@gmail.com>, Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, Oleg Bartunov <obartunov@gmail.com>, Craig Ringer <craig@2ndquadrant.com>, Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@2ndquadrant.com>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2017-12-01T19:48:59Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers 
Ildus Kurbangaliev wrote:

> If the table is big, decompression could take an eternity. That's why i
> decided to only to disable it and the data could be decompressed using
> compression options.
> 
> My idea was to keep compression options forever, since there will not
> be much of them in one database. Still that requires that extension is
> not removed.
> 
> I will try to find a way how to recompress data first in case it moves
> to another table.

I think what you should do is add a dependency between a column that
compresses using a method, and that method.  So the method cannot be
dropped and leave compressed data behind.  Since the method is part of
the extension, the extension cannot be dropped either.  If you ALTER
the column so that it uses another compression method, then the table is
rewritten and the dependency is removed; once you do that for all the
columns that use the compression method, the compression method can be
dropped.

Maybe our dependency code needs to be extended in order to support this.
I think the current logic would drop the column if you were to do "DROP
COMPRESSION .. CASCADE", but I'm not sure we'd see that as a feature.
I'd rather have DROP COMPRESSION always fail instead until no columns
use it.  Let's hear other's opinions on this bit though.

-- 
Álvaro Herrera                https://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services

Commits

  1. docs: Update TOAST storage docs for configurable compression.

  2. Further tweaking of pg_dump's handling of default_toast_compression.

  3. Fix interaction of TOAST compression with expression indexes.

  4. Tidy up more loose ends related to configurable TOAST compression.

  5. Short-circuit slice requests that are for more than the object's size.

  6. Mostly-cosmetic adjustments of TOAST-related macros.

  7. Remove useless configure probe for <lz4/lz4.h>.

  8. Error on invalid TOAST compression in CREATE or ALTER TABLE.

  9. docs: Fix omissions related to configurable TOAST compression.

  10. More code cleanup for configurable TOAST compression.

  11. Bring configure support for LZ4 up to snuff.

  12. Make compression.sql regression test independent of default.

  13. Use valid compression method in brin_form_tuple

  14. Fix up pg_dump's handling of per-attribute compression options.

  15. Allow configurable LZ4 TOAST compression.

  16. Fix inconsistencies in the code

  17. Mostly-cosmetic improvements in memory chunk header alignment coding.

  18. Allow numeric to use a more compact, 2-byte header in many cases.