Re: Streaming read-ready sequential scan code

On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 9:08 PM David Rowley <dgrowleyml(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 4 Apr 2024 at 06:03, Melanie Plageman <melanieplageman(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> > Attached v8 is rebased over current master (which now has the
> > streaming read API).
>
> I've looked at the v8-0001 patch.

Thanks for taking a look!

> I wasn't too keen on heapbuildvis() as a function name for an external
> function. Since it also does pruning work, it seemed weird to make it
> sound like it only did visibility work. Per our offline discussion
> about names, I've changed it to what you suggested which is
> heap_page_prep().

Looking at it in the code, I am wondering if we should call
heap_page_prep() heap_scan_page_prep(). Just wondering if it is clear
that it is prepping a page to be scanned. You choose whatever you
think is best.

> Aside from that, there was an outdated comment: "In pageatatime mode,
> heapgetpage() already did visibility checks," which was no longer true
> as that's done in heapbuildvis() (now heap_page_prep()).
>
> I also did a round of comment adjustments as there were a few things I
> didn't like, e.g:
>
> + * heapfetchbuf - subroutine for heapgettup()
>
> This is also used in heapgettup_pagemode(), so I thought it was a bad
> idea for a function to list places it thinks it's being called. I
> also thought it redundant to write "This routine" in the function head
> comment. I think "this routine" is implied by the context. I ended up
> with:
>
> /*
> * heapfetchbuf - read and pin the given MAIN_FORKNUM block number.
> *
> * Read the specified block of the scan relation into a buffer and pin that
> * buffer before saving it in the scan descriptor.
> */
>
> I'm happy with your changes to heapam_scan_sample_next_block(). I did
> adjust the comment above CHECK_FOR_INTERRUPTS() so it was effectively
> the same as the seqscan version, just with "seqscan" swapped for
> "sample scan".

That all is fine with me.

> The only other thing I adjusted there was to use "blockno" in some
> places where you were using hscan->rs_cblock. These all come after
> the "hscan->rs_cblock = blockno;" line. My thoughts here are that this
> is more likely to avoid reading the value from the struct again if the
> compiler isn't happy that the two values are still equivalent for some
> reason. Even if the compiler is happy today, it would only take a
> code change to pass hscan to some external function for the compiler
> to perhaps be uncertain if that function has made an adjustment to
> rs_cblock and go with the safe option of pulling the value out the
> struct again which is a little more expensive as it requires some
> maths to figure out the offset.
>
> I've attached v9-0001 and a delta of just my changes from v8.

All sounds good and LGTM

- Melanie