Re: [HACKERS] Custom compression methods

On Thu, Dec 14, 2017 at 12:23 PM, Tomas Vondra
<tomas(dot)vondra(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
> Can you give an example of such algorithm? Because I haven't seen such
> example, and I find arguments based on hypothetical compression methods
> somewhat suspicious.
>
> FWIW I'm not against considering such compression methods, but OTOH it
> may not be such a great primary use case to drive the overall design.

Well it isn't, really. I am honestly not sure what we're arguing
about at this point. I think you've agreed that (1) opening avenues
for extensibility is useful, (2) substitution a general-purpose
compression algorithm could be useful, and (3) having datatype
compression that is enabled through TOAST rather than built into the
datatype might sometimes be desirable. That's more than adequate
justification for this proposal, whether half-general compression
methods exist or not. I am prepared to concede that there may be no
useful examples of such a thing.

--
Robert Haas
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