Re: [HACKERS] Patch: Write Amplification Reduction Method (WARM) - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

Pavan Deolasee wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 7:17 AM, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com>
> wrote:

> > I have already commented about the executor involvement in btrecheck();
> > that doesn't seem good.  I previously suggested to pass the EState down
> > from caller, but that's not a great idea either since you still need to
> > do the actual FormIndexDatum.  I now think that a workable option would
> > be to compute the values/isnulls arrays so that btrecheck gets them
> > already computed.
>
> I agree with your complaint about modularity violation. What I am unclear
> is how passing values/isnulls array will fix that. The way code is
> structured currently, recheck routines are called by index_fetch_heap(). So
> if we try to compute values/isnulls in that function, we'll still need
> access EState, which AFAIU will lead to similar violation. Or am I
> mis-reading your idea?

You're right, it's still a problem.  (Honestly, I think the whole idea
of trying to compute a fake index tuple starting from a just-read heap
tuple is a problem in itself;

I just wonder if there's a way to do the
recheck that doesn't involve such a thing.)

> I wonder if we should instead invent something similar to IndexRecheck(),
> but instead of running ExecQual(), this new routine will compare the index
> values by the given HeapTuple against given IndexTuple. ISTM that for this
> to work we'll need to modify all callers of index_getnext() and teach them
> to invoke the AM specific recheck method if xs_tuple_recheck flag is set to
> true by index_getnext().

Yeah, grumble, that idea does sound intrusive, but perhaps it's
workable.  What about bitmap indexscans?  AFAICS we already have a
recheck there natively, so we only need to mark the page as lossy, which
we're already doing anyway.