Re: Bitmap index thoughts

From: Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us>
To: Heikki Linnakangas <heikki(at)enterprisedb(dot)com>
Cc: swm(at)linuxworld(dot)com(dot)au, PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: Bitmap index thoughts
Date: 2007-02-02 00:28:38
Message-ID: 200702020028.l120Scp13262@momjian.us
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Where are we on this patch? Does it have performance tests to show
where it is beneificial? Is it ready to be reviewed?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Heikki Linnakangas wrote:
> I've been skimming through the bitmap index patch...
>
> A scan needs to access at least five pages:
>
> 1. B-tree index (root+others, depending on depth)
> 2. The auxiliary heap page
> 3. bitmap index meta page
> 4. LOV page
> 5. bitmap page
>
> That seems like a lot of indirection. A high startup cost is probably ok
> for typical bitmap index use cases and most of the needed pages should
> stay in memory, but could we simplify this? Why do we need the auxiliary
> heap, couldn't we just store the blk+offset of the LOV item directly in
> the b-tree index item?
>
> And instead of having separate LOV pages that store a number of LOV
> items, how about storing each LOV item on a page of it's own, and using
> the rest of the page to store the last chunk of the bitmap. That would
> eliminate one page access, but more importantly, maybe we could then get
> rid of all the bm_last_* attributes in BMLOVItemData that complicate the
> patch quite a bit, while preserving the performance.
>
> --
> Heikki Linnakangas
> EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings

--
Bruce Momjian bruce(at)momjian(dot)us
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com

+ If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

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