An introduction to the current state of work in progress for adding
improved partitioning features to PostgreSQL is documented at
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Table_partitioning
If you can find a small, targeted piece of that overall plan that builds
on the work already done, and is in the direction of the final goal
here, you may be able to make useful progress in a few months time.
This area is extremely well explored already. There are 13 mailing list
threads you'll need to browse through carefully just to have enough
background that you're likely to build something new, rather than just
wandering down a path that's already been followed but leads to a dead end.
You have picked a PostgreSQL feature that is dramatically more difficult
than it appears to be, and I wouldn't expect you'll actually finish even
a fraction of your goals in a summer of work. You're at least in
plentiful company--most students do the same. As a rule, if you see a
feature on our TODO list that looks really useful and fun to work on,
it's only still there because people have tried multiple times to build
it completely but not managed to do so because it's harder than it
appears. This is certainly the case with improving the partitioning
support that's built in to the database.
--
Greg Smith 2ndQuadrant US Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support
greg@2ndQuadrant.com www.2ndQuadrant.us
