Re: Refactor how we form HeapTuples for CatalogTuple(Insert|Update)

On Thu, Dec 4, 2025 at 12:50 PM Michael Paquier <michael(at)paquier(dot)xyz> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Dec 03, 2025 at 09:11:03AM -0500, Greg Burd wrote:
> > On Dec 2 2025, at 11:16 pm, Michael Paquier <michael(at)paquier(dot)xyz> wrote:
> > I've looked in the email archives a bit and didn't come up with much
> > related to catalog upgrades. I don't know if there is much on the
> > record information on this idea, but from what I've been told the idea
> > of decoupling heap from catalogs with the goal of getting closer to
> > making online upgrades possible has been referenced a few times in
> > hallway tracks at various conferences.
>
> John Naylor has been looking at this problem at some point, if I
> recall correctly. Adding him in CC here for comments and opinions, or
> perhaps I am just wrong in assuming that he has looked at this area.

Hmm, I think the decoupling on-disk format from in-memory format was
most directly relevant for the idea of changing the "name" type from a
fixed length type, to a domain over text.

Catalog manipulation as speculated for online upgrades could probably
operate on the values/nulls array.

--
John Naylor
Amazon Web Services