Re: index-only scans

I wrote:
> I have mostly-working code for approach #3, but I haven't tried to make
> EXPLAIN work yet. While looking at that I realized that there's a
> pretty good argument for adding the above-mentioned explicit TargetEntry
> list representing the index columns to index-only plan nodes. Namely,
> that if we don't do it, EXPLAIN will have to go to the catalogs to find
> out what's in that index, and this will fall down for "hypothetical"
> indexes injected into the planner by index advisors. We could imagine
> adding some more hooks to let the advisor inject bogus catalog data at
> EXPLAIN time, but on the whole it seems easier and less fragile to just
> have the planner include a data structure it has to build anyway into
> the finished plan.

> The need for this additional node list field also sways me in a
> direction that I'd previously been on the fence about, namely that
> I think index-only scans need to be their own independent plan node type
> instead of sharing a node type with regular indexscans. It's just too
> weird that a simple boolean indexonly property would mean completely
> different contents/interpretation of the tlist and quals.

Attached is a draft patch for this. It needs some more review before
committing, but it does pass regression tests now.

One point worth commenting on is that I chose to rename the OUTER and
INNER symbols for special varnos to OUTER_VAR and INNER_VAR, along with
adding a new special varno INDEX_VAR. It's bothered me for some time
that those macro names were way too generic/susceptible to collision;
and since I had to look at all the uses anyway to see if the INDEX case
needed to be added, this seemed like a good time to rename them.

regards, tom lane