Re: Partitioning option for COPY

Simon Riggs wrote:
> ...Read my detailed comments in response to Kedar's patch and post
> comments on that thread to say you didn't agree with that proposal and
> that you were thinking of another way entirely.
Useful background here is:

http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Table_partitioning
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2008-01/msg00413.php
http://archives.postgresql.org/message-id/bd8134a40906080702s96c90a9q3bbb581b9bd0d5d7@mail.gmail.com
http://archives.postgresql.org/message-id/1247564358.11347.1308.camel@ebony.2ndQuadrant

The basic problem here is that Emmanuel and Aster developed a useful
answer to one of the more pressing implementation details needed here,
but did so without being involved in the much larger discussion of how
to implement general, more automated partitioning in PostgreSQL that (as
you can see from the date of the first links there) has been going on
for years already. What we did wrong as a community is not more
explicitly tell Emmanuel the above when he first submitted code a few
months ago, before he'd invested more time on a subset implementation
that was unlikely to be committed. As I already commented upthread, I
was just happy to see coding progress being made on part of the design
that nobody had hacked on before to my knowledge; I didn't consider then
how Emmanuel was going to be disappointed by the slow rate that code
would be assimilated into the design going on in this area.

What would probably be helpful here is to take the mess of raw data
above and turn it into a simpler partitioning roadmap. There's a stack
of useful patches here, multiple contributors who have gotten familiar
with the implementation details required, and enough time left that it's
possible to pull something together in time for 8.5--but only if
everyone is clear on exactly what direction to push toward. I'm going
to reread the history here myself and see if I can write something
helpful here.

--
Greg Smith 2ndQuadrant Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support
greg(at)2ndQuadrant(dot)com www.2ndQuadrant.com