Hypothetical Indexes

Hello,

I have just finished my M.Sc. thesis at Pontifícia Universidade
Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Brazil, and we have developed a
research prototype for automatic index selection using a software
agent in PostgreSQL. In order to make index selection possible, we
have extended the PostgreSQL DBMS to allow the simulation of
hypothetical indexes. We believe these server extensions may be of
value for addition to the PostgreSQL code base.

A description of the work we have been doing is available at:

http://www.inf.puc-rio.br/~postgresql/

There you will find a link to a tutorial based description of the
hypothetical indexes feature we have implemented on PostgreSQL 7.4
beta 3.

I am aware that we shouldn't go on working on things that are not on
the TODO list, but we had a research oriented focus. At the end of the
day, it turned out that some of the things we coded might be useful to
the PostgreSQL community and we would be happy if we can contribute.

So, what do you people think? Should we work together to make this
new feature available on newer PostgreSQL versions?

Thanks in advance for your attention,

Marcos Salles.

P.S: An interesting consequence of having hypothetical indexes in the
system is that this eases the implementation of index tuning tools
(e.g. the Microsoft SQL Server's Index Tuning Wizard). We are planning
to implement one such tool to the PostgreSQL database (at first as a
command-line utility).