• Tom Lane's avatar
    Redesign tablesample method API, and do extensive code review. · dd7a8f66
    Tom Lane authored
    The original implementation of TABLESAMPLE modeled the tablesample method
    API on index access methods, which wasn't a good choice because, without
    specialized DDL commands, there's no way to build an extension that can
    implement a TSM.  (Raw inserts into system catalogs are not an acceptable
    thing to do, because we can't undo them during DROP EXTENSION, nor will
    pg_upgrade behave sanely.)  Instead adopt an API more like procedural
    language handlers or foreign data wrappers, wherein the only SQL-level
    support object needed is a single handler function identified by having
    a special return type.  This lets us get rid of the supporting catalog
    altogether, so that no custom DDL support is needed for the feature.
    
    Adjust the API so that it can support non-constant tablesample arguments
    (the original coding assumed we could evaluate the argument expressions at
    ExecInitSampleScan time, which is undesirable even if it weren't outright
    unsafe), and discourage sampling methods from looking at invisible tuples.
    Make sure that the BERNOULLI and SYSTEM methods are genuinely repeatable
    within and across queries, as required by the SQL standard, and deal more
    honestly with methods that can't support that requirement.
    
    Make a full code-review pass over the tablesample additions, and fix
    assorted bugs, omissions, infelicities, and cosmetic issues (such as
    failure to put the added code stanzas in a consistent ordering).
    Improve EXPLAIN's output of tablesample plans, too.
    
    Back-patch to 9.5 so that we don't have to support the original API
    in production.
    dd7a8f66
tsm_system_rows.c 10.5 KB