Re: [HACKERS] number of attributes in page files?

Am Freitag, 11. Oktober 2002 14:12 schrieb Tom Lane:
> Mario Weilguni <mweilguni(at)sime(dot)com> writes:
> > Is it possible to get rid of the "t_natts" fields in the tuple header?
> > Is this field only for "alter table add/drop" support?
>
> "Only"? A lot of people consider that pretty important ...

With "only" I mean it's an administrative task which requires operator intervenation anyways, and it's a seldom needed operation which may take longer, when
queries become faster.

>
> But removing 2 bytes isn't going to save anything, on most machines,
> because of alignment considerations.

ok, I did not consider alignment, but the question remains, is this easily doable? Especially because only one another byte has to be saved for
real saving on many architectures, which is t_hoff. IMO t_hoff is not useful because it can be computed easily. This would give 20 byte headers instead of 23 (24) bytes as it's now.
This is 17% saved, and if it's not too complicated it might be worth to consider.

Best regards,
Mario Weilguni