Re: Add pg_walinspect function with block info columns

On Fri, Mar 17, 2023 at 12:36:04PM -0700, Peter Geoghegan wrote:
> I think that this direction makes a lot of sense. Under this scheme,
> we still have pg_get_wal_records_info(), which is more or less an SQL
> interface to the information that pg_waldump presents by default.
> That's important when the record view of things is of primary
> importance. But now you also have a "block oriented" view of WAL
> presented by pg_get_wal_block_info(), which is useful when particular
> blocks are of primary interest. I think that I'll probably end up
> using both, while primarily using pg_get_wal_block_info() for more
> advanced analysis that focuses on what happened to particular blocks
> over time.

FWIW, I am not sure that it is a good idea and that we'd better not
encourage too much the use of block_info() across a large range of
WAL, which is what this function will make users eager to do in this
case as it is possible to apply directly more filters to it. This is
a community, so, anyway, if you feel strongly about doing this change,
feel free to.
--
Michael