• Tom Lane's avatar
    Redesign get_attstatsslot()/free_attstatsslot() for more safety and speed. · 9aab83fc
    Tom Lane authored
    The mess cleaned up in commit da075960 is clear evidence that it's a
    bug hazard to expect the caller of get_attstatsslot()/free_attstatsslot()
    to provide the correct type OID for the array elements in the slot.
    Moreover, we weren't even getting any performance benefit from that,
    since get_attstatsslot() was extracting the real type OID from the array
    anyway.  So we ought to get rid of that requirement; indeed, it would
    make more sense for get_attstatsslot() to pass back the type OID it found,
    in case the caller isn't sure what to expect, which is likely in binary-
    compatible-operator cases.
    
    Another problem with the current implementation is that if the stats array
    element type is pass-by-reference, we incur a palloc/memcpy/pfree cycle
    for each element.  That seemed acceptable when the code was written because
    we were targeting O(10) array sizes --- but these days, stats arrays are
    almost always bigger than that, sometimes much bigger.  We can save a
    significant number of cycles by doing one palloc/memcpy/pfree of the whole
    array.  Indeed, in the now-probably-common case where the array is toasted,
    that happens anyway so this method is basically free.  (Note: although the
    catcache code will inline any out-of-line toasted values, it doesn't
    decompress them.  At the other end of the size range, it doesn't expand
    short-header datums either.  In either case, DatumGetArrayTypeP would have
    to make a copy.  We do end up using an extra array copy step if the element
    type is pass-by-value and the array length is neither small enough for a
    short header nor large enough to have suffered compression.  But that
    seems like a very acceptable price for winning in pass-by-ref cases.)
    
    Hence, redesign to take these insights into account.  While at it,
    convert to an API in which we fill a struct rather than passing a bunch
    of pointers to individual output arguments.  That will make it less
    painful if we ever want further expansion of what get_attstatsslot can
    pass back.
    
    It's certainly arguable that this is new development and not something to
    push post-feature-freeze.  However, I view it as primarily bug-proofing
    and therefore something that's better to have sooner not later.  Since
    we aren't quite at beta phase yet, let's put it in.
    
    Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/16364.1494520862@sss.pgh.pa.us
    9aab83fc
lsyscache.h 7.64 KB