Re: Update obsolete text in indexam.sgml
Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: "Etsuro Fujita" <fujita.etsuro@lab.ntt.co.jp>
Cc: "'PostgreSQL-development'" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2012-11-07T00:37:00Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
"Etsuro Fujita" <fujita.etsuro@lab.ntt.co.jp> writes: > Agreed. However, I am concerned about the next comment in the current code: > /* > * Our generic assumption is that the index pages will be read > * sequentially, so they cost seq_page_cost each, not random_page_cost. > * ... > I think this assumption is completely wrong, which has given me a motivation to > propose a patch, though I am missing something. Mph. It's pretty hard to argue that it's wrong without considering a specific index implementation, which in practice would have a ton of other details that need to be accounted for here. I don't have a strong objection to changing the sample code to use random_page_cost instead, but I doubt it will help anybody one way or another. FWIW, the docs' sample code was an accurate transcription of what genericcostestimate did at the time (8.1 era). I think the case we were thinking of when that code was written was a recently-rebuilt btree index, in which logically adjacent leaf pages would indeed often be sequential. regards, tom lane