Re: plans for bitmap indexes? - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Mark Kirkwood
Subject Re: plans for bitmap indexes?
Date
Msg-id 4172E958.2090803@coretech.co.nz
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: plans for bitmap indexes?  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
List pgsql-hackers
Tom Lane wrote:

>
>I believe that the term "bitmap index" is also used with a different
>meaning wherein it actually does describe a particular kind of on-disk
>index structure, with one bit per table row.
>
>IMHO building in-memory bitmaps (the first idea) is a very good idea to
>pursue for Postgres.  I'm not at all sold on on-disk bitmap indexes,
>though ... those I suspect *are* sufficiently replaced by partial
>indexes.
>
>  
>
I believe that the benefit of on-disk bitmap indexes is supposed to be 
reduced storage size (compared to btree).

In the cases where I have put them to use, they certainly occupy 
considerably less disk than a comparable btree index - provided there 
are not too many district values in the indexed column.

regards

Mark


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