Re: Proposal to Enable/Disable Index using ALTER INDEX

On Thursday, July 17, 2025, Sami Imseih <samimseih(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

>
> My concern with #1 is that when we one day do get query hints, we'll
>> be left with a bunch of redundant ways to influence planner behaviour.
>
>
I’d rather not stop accepting improvements of this sort until we get a
proper planner hint into core.

I’d argue we should not provide the ALTER option without the GUC, for
> more granular control.
>

Agreed. DBAs should do research. Optimistic ones can then use alter index
to efficiently deploy their informed decisions throughout their systems.
They have GUC as a temporary fallback mechanism should they need it.
Pessimistic ones can just micro-manage using the GUC.

Unless someone is willing to try and get “The PostgreSQL team’s blessed
guide to index management” into the documentation as well we should
probably just accept this will be a bit tool belt approach and there will
be tools that for one person’s approach are not useful. That does not mean
they need to be removed (so long as they were added intentionally).

David J.