Re: Fractal tree indexing

On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnakangas(at)vmware(dot)com
> wrote:

> On 13.02.2013 11:01, Atri Sharma wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Just a curiosity I couldnt control. I was recently reading about
>> Fractal tree indexing
>> (http://www.tokutek.com/2012/**12/fractal-tree-indexing-**overview/<http://www.tokutek.com/2012/12/fractal-tree-indexing-overview/>)
>> and
>> how TokuDB engine for MySQL is really working nicely with big data.
>>
>
> Hmm, sounds very similar to the GiST buffering build work Alexander
> Korotkov did for 9.2. Only the buffers are for B-trees rather than GiST,
> and the buffers are permanent, rather than used only during index build.
> It's also somewhat similar to the fast insert mechanism in GIN, except that
> the gin fast insert buffer is just a single buffer, rather than a buffer at
> each node.
>
>
> I was wondering, do we have support for fractal tree indexing? I mean,
>> it really does seem to help manage big data, so we could think of
>> supporting it in some form for our large data set clients( if it is
>> not happening already someplace which I have missed).
>>
>
> There are no fractal trees in PostgreSQL today. Patches are welcome ;-).

I remember we have already discussed fractal trees privately. Short
conclusions are so:
1) Fractal tree indexes are patented. It is distributed as commercial
extension to MySQL. So we can't include it into PostgreSQL core.
2) Tokutek can't provide full-fledged fractal tree indexes as PostgreSQL
extension because lack of WAL extensibility.
We could think about WAL extensibility which would help other applications
as well.

------
With best regards,
Alexander Korotkov.