Re: Pluggable Indexes (was Re: rmgr hooks (v2))

Simon Riggs wrote:
> Right now we've got a variety of index types that are *not* flourishing
> (hash, bitmap, grouped).

Hash indexam has been in core for ages, and yet no-one has bothered to
implement WAL logging. If I've understood correctly, it has been now
been revamped in 8.4 so that there's a performance use case to use it. I
wouldn't be surprised if someone (GSoC?) implements WAL logging for it
for 8.5.

Bitmap indexes required significant changes to the rest of the system,
the indexam API in particular.

By "grouped", I presume you mean my grouped index tuples patch, aka
clustered indexes. That too required changes to the indexam API, and
even if it didn't, I can guarantee that I wouldn't spend any more time
on it than I do now (= 0) if it was on pgfoundry.

> If we allow them to develop as separate
> projects, then whenever they are ready they can be used with particular
> releases.

Developing a new indexam is not something you do over the weekend. It's
a long way from design to an implementation robust enough that anyone
cares about crash recovery. Short-circuiting the release cycle with a
plugin won't get you a production-ready indexam much sooner.

--
Heikki Linnakangas
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com