Re: Custom Scan APIs (Re: Custom Plan node)

> > As I mentioned
> > up-thread, I'd really like to see FDW join push-down, FDW aggregate
> > push-down, parallel query execution, and parallel remote-FDW execution
> > and I don't see this CustomScan approach as the right answer to any of
> > those.
>
> In accordance with the above, what I'd like to see with this patch is removal
> of the postgres_fdw changes and any changes which were for that support.
>
I don't argue this approach. It might be useful to *demonstrate* how custom-
scan node works as replacement of join, however,

> In addition, I'd like to understand why 'ctidscan' makes any sense to have
> as an example of what to use this for- if that's valuable, why wouldn't
> we simply implement that in core? I do want an example in contrib of how
> to properly use this capability, but I don't think that's it.
>
Do you think it makes sense if my submission was only interface portion
without working example? The purpose of ctidscan module is, similar to
postgres_fdw, to demonstrate the usage of custom-scan interface with
enough small code scale. If tons of code example were attached, nobody
will want to review the patch.
The "cache_scan" module that I and Haribabu are discussing in another
thread also might be a good demonstration for custom-scan interface,
however, its code scale is a bit larger than ctidscan.

> For one thing, an example where you could have this CustomScan node calling
> other nodes underneath would be interesting. I realize the CTID scan can't
> do that directly but I would think your GPU-based system could; after all,
> if you're running a join or an aggregate with the GPU, the rows could come
> from nearly anything. Have you considered that, or is the expectation that
> users will just go off and access the heap and/or whatever indexes directly,
> like ctidscan does? How would such a requirement be handled?
>
In case when custom-scan node has underlying nodes, it shall be invoked using
ExecProcNode as built-in node doing, then it will be able to fetch tuples
come from underlying nodes. Of course, custom-scan provider can perform the
tuples come from somewhere as if it came from underlying relation. It is
responsibility of extension module. In some cases, it shall be required to
return junk system attribute, like ctid, for row-level locks or table updating.
It is also responsibility of the extension module (or, should not add custom-
path if this custom-scan provider cannot perform as required).

Thanks,
--
NEC OSS Promotion Center / PG-Strom Project
KaiGai Kohei <kaigai(at)ak(dot)jp(dot)nec(dot)com>