Re: [HACKERS] Well, then you keep your darn columns

At 11:48 AM 1/24/00 -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:

>> 2a) Does anyone have a better idea? (Btw., I'm not too excited about
>> by-passing the storage manager and writing around in the table file on
>> disk. If vacuum does that, that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.)

>I totally agree that bypassing the storage manager is the wrong way to
>go with this. All the command/*.c stuff is make to be clean, not fast.
>It is better to put something together that works rather than optimize
>things like add user or create database.

>Now, I will admit the ALTER DROP is going take much longer than most
>command/*.c, so it may be worth it some day to try and do this, but I
>don't see this as a priority at this point. We have many other items to
>work on that are more important.

Also, by-passing the storage manager would make it more difficult to
replace it with another, for instance a storage manager based on raw
disk I/O, which some folks seem interested in. Though I don't count
myself in that class, it seems like the storage manager abstraction
has been preserved in order to simplify alternative approaches if
folks want to add them in the future, and it seems wrong to by-pass
that layer of abstraction.

- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza(at)pacifier(dot)com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, Pacific Northwest
Rare Bird Alert Service and other goodies at
http://donb.photo.net.