Horton

Re: What to name the current heap after pluggable storage / what to rename?

Thomas Munro <thomas.munro@enterprisedb.com>

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From: Thomas Munro <thomas.munro@enterprisedb.com>
To: Arkhena@gmail.com
Cc: Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@2ndquadrant.com>, Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>, Pg Hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>, Haribabu Kommi <kommi.haribabu@gmail.com>, Alexander Korotkov <a.korotkov@postgrespro.ru>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, Amit Kapila <amit.kapila16@gmail.com>
Date: 2018-12-19T10:15:56Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers 
On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 7:44 PM Arkhena <Arkhena@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm wondering where the choice of the name "heap" originally came from
>> and what it refers to.
>
> It seems to me that "heap" is an Oracle word (as explained here[1]).
>
> > By default, a table is organized as a heap, which means that the database places rows where they fit best rather than in a user-specified order.

No, it's more widely used than that, and we're using it with the
standard meaning AFAIK:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/indexes/heaps-tables-without-clustered-indexes?view=sql-server-2017
http://docs.actian.com/ingres/10.2/index.html#page/DatabaseAdmin/Heap_Storage_Structure.htm

It just means tuples stored in no particular order (as opposed to eg
btree tables, in systems that support those).

-- 
Thomas Munro
http://www.enterprisedb.com

Commits

  1. Replace heapam.h includes with {table, relation}.h where applicable.

  2. Replace uses of heap_open et al with the corresponding table_* function.

  3. Introduce access/{table.h, relation.h}, for generic functions from heapam.h.