rfd: multi-key GiST index problems (fwd)

This is resent of my messages I sent by mistake to BUGS list

Regards,
Oleg
_____________________________________________________________
Oleg Bartunov, sci.researcher, hostmaster of AstroNet,
Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow University (Russia)
Internet: oleg(at)sai(dot)msu(dot)su, http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/
phone: +007(095)939-16-83, +007(095)939-23-83

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 19:14:41 +0300 (GMT)
From: Oleg Bartunov <oleg(at)sai(dot)msu(dot)su>
To: tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us
Cc: pgsql-bugs(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: rfd: multi-key GiST index problems

Tom,

we're hardly working on multi-key support in GiST and horizon is
being closer :-) I'd like to raise several questions:

1. index_getprocid (backend/access/index/idexam.c) doesn't
properly supports multi-keys indexes with procnum > 1
it's works only if either procnum=1 (B-tree, hash) or attnum=1
(Rtree,Gist,hash). But for multi-key GiST we have
7>=procnum >=1 and attnum > 1

We've found workaround for GiST by using define, but general solution
requires knowledge of the number of procedures for given type of index
We didn't find a place where this number is stored in the index structure.
if it's not index it's necessary to add it to the index structure.

2. it's necessary to recognize if index attribute requires checking
for lossines. Consider following:
create index a on table using gist(a gist__int_ops) with (islossy);
create index b on table using gist(b gist_box_ops);

create index c on table using gist(b gist_box_ops,a gist__int_ops) with (islossy);

gist__int_ops uses compression with lossy, so we need to check heap tuple
after successful checking of index tuple, but gist_box_ops doesn't
requires such test. In third example with multi-key index we
forced to use 'with (islossy)' for all index even if select will
use index by first attribute (b gist_box_ops) which is a not right
thing.
We'd like to specify lossy attribute for each attribute of index
something like:
create index c on table using gist(b gist_box_ops,a gist__int_ops with (islossy));
Accordingly executor should understand and process this syntax.

Current status:

we could create multi-key GiST index and search is working for 1st attribute
as in current version. there is a problem with searching on next attributes
because currently StrategyNumber (contains, overlap, less ..etc) doesn't
determined for these attributes. StrategyNumber is used for method
Consistence. We hope to resolve this problem.

Regards,
Oleg
_____________________________________________________________
Oleg Bartunov, sci.researcher, hostmaster of AstroNet,
Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow University (Russia)
Internet: oleg(at)sai(dot)msu(dot)su, http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/
phone: +007(095)939-16-83, +007(095)939-23-83