Re: 9.5 release notes

On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 4:23 PM, Peter Geoghegan <pg(at)heroku(dot)com> wrote:
> Secondly, Robert didn't credit himself as an author in his commit
> message for the abbreviated keys infrastructure + text opclass support
> *at all*. However, I think that Robert should be listed as a secondary
> author of the abbreviated keys infrastructure, and that he would agree
> that I am clearly the primary author. Andrew Gierth did work on the
> datum case for sortsupport + abbreviation, so I agree he should be
> listed as a secondary author of the infrastructure too, after Robert.

I'd probably say Peter, Andrew, me.

> I think there should be a total of 4 items related to sorting. The
> wording I come up with may not be appropriate, but will give you an
> idea:
>
> * Allow sorting to be performed by inlined, non-SQL-callable
> comparison functions for CREATE INDEX, REINDEX and CLUSTER operations
> based on a B-Tree operator class. (5ea86e6e6 -- Geoghegan)
>
> * Add abbreviated key sorting infrastructure. This allows B-Tree
> operator classes to provide compact abbreviated representations of
> pass-by-reference types which are sorted with inexpensive comparisons.
> This makes sort operations with support for the infrastructure very
> significantly faster in the common case where most comparisons can be
> resolved with the abbreviated representation alone. (4ea51cdfe85 --
> Geoghegan, Haas, Gierth, with Gierth's contribution coming from
> 78efd5c1 alone)
>
> * Add sortsupport (support for non-SQL callable interface for
> comparators) with abbreviation capability to text/varlena operator
> class. This significantly accelerates sorting on text columns.
> (4ea51cdfe85 too, but also b34e37bf. Worth noting separately IMV.
> Geoghegan, Haas).
>
> * Add sortsupport (support for non-SQL callable interface for
> comparators) with abbreviation capability to numeric operator class.
> This significantly accelerates sorting on numeric columns. (abd94bcac,
> Gierth)

I think this is overkill. Bruce's single entry seems fine to me,
although we could adjust the wording a bit. We need this to be simple
enough that someone not immersed in the code can understand it, and as
soon as you talk about sortsupport as if it were a thing, you lose
that.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company