Re: [PATCH] updates to docs about HOT updates for BRIN

Greetings,

* Alvaro Herrera (alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org) wrote:
> On 2024-Feb-26, Stephen Frost wrote:
> > Here's an updated patch which tries to improve on the wording a bit by
> > having it be a bit more consistent.  Would certainly welcome feedback on
> > it though, of course.  This is a tricky bit of language to write and
> > a complex optimization to explain.
> 
> Should we try to explain what is a "summarizing" index is?  Right now
> the only way to know is to look at the source code or attach a debugger
> and see if IndexAmRoutine->amsummarizing is true.  Maybe we can just say
> "currently the only in-core summarizing index is BRIN" somewhere in the
> page.  (The patch's proposal to say "... such as BRIN" strikes me as too
> vague.)

Not sure about explaining what one is, but I'd be fine adding that
language.  I was disappointed to see that there's no way to figure out
the value of amsummarizing for an access method other than looking at
the code.  Not as part of this specific patch, but I'd generally support
having a way to that information at the SQL level (or perhaps everything
from IndexAmRoutine?).

Attached is an updated patch which drops the 'such as' and adds a
sentence mentioning that BRIN is the only in-core summarizing index.

Thanks!

Stephen