Re: AW: pg_index.indislossy

From: Bruce Momjian <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
Cc: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net>, Zeugswetter Andreas SB <ZeugswetterA(at)wien(dot)spardat(dot)at>, PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: AW: pg_index.indislossy
Date: 2001-07-10 17:46:08
Message-ID: 200107101746.f6AHk8b25767@candle.pha.pa.us
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> Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net> writes:
> > But why is this called lossy? Shouldn't it be called "exceedy"?
>
> Good point ;-). "lossy" does sound like the index might "lose" tuples,
> which is exactly what it's not allowed to do; it must find all the
> tuples that match the query.
>
> The terminology is correct by analogy to "lossy compression" --- the
> index loses information, in the sense that its result isn't quite the
> result you wanted. But I can see where it'd confuse the unwary.
> Perhaps we should consult the literature and see if there is another
> term for this concept.

Seeing how our ODBC driver refrences it in previous releases, we are
going to have trouble changing it. I always thought it was "lossy" in
terms of compression too.

I don't see it mentioned now in ODBC, but I think it used to be there.
I changed it recently to check for word "hash" instead.

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