It would be helpful to explain how this solves the lack of atomicity of
visibility data updates, which last time I checked was the killer
problem for this feature.
Hmmm... To put it more clearly, this problem occurs when there is a thick index on a mutable function(marked as immutable). In order to avoid the problem, i wrote the code that would not support functional indexes, it would only support the normal ones. I think the main argument against Thick Index was
- Visibility Map, which supports "Index only Scans" partially but by occupying lesser space and doesn't have the functional index issue. Since the main advantage of Thick Index was Index Only Scans, the community preferred to wait for Visibility map
Heikki is working on the Visibility map and i think his observations might help on Thick Index project.
Thanks,
Gokul.
