On Tue, Apr 20, 2021 at 3:45 PM Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie> wrote:
On Tue, Apr 20, 2021 at 12:35 PM Chapman Flack <chap@anastigmatix.net> wrote: > How would showing that to be true for data structure X be different from > making a case for data structure X?
You don't have to understand the theoretical basis of B-Tree indexes to see that they work well. In fact, it took at least a decade for somebody to formalize how the space utilization works with B-Trees containing random data. Of course theory matters, but the fact is that B-Trees had been widely used for commercial and scientific applications that whole time.
Maybe I'll be wrong about learned indexes - who knows? But the burden of proof is not mine. I prefer to spend my time on things that I am reasonably confident will work out well ahead of time.
Agreed on all of your takes, Peter. In time, they will probably be more realistic. But, at present, I tend to see the research papers make comparisons between learned vs. traditional pitching the benefits of the former without any of the well-known optimizations of the latter - as if time stood still since the original B-Tree. Similarly, where most academic research starts to fall apart in practicality is the lack of addressing realistic write volumes and related concurrency issues. I'm happy to be disproven on this, though.
