Alright, so while I agree with everything you've asked for, the fact
is that there is a controversy in relation to binary bloat, and that's
the blocker here. How can we satisfactorily resolve that, or is that
question adequately addressed by the benchmark that I produced?
What if third party modules could include the template_qsort_arg.h
header, and instantiate their own specialisation? The sort support
function could either set an enum, or set a pointer to a qsort_arg
specialisation, if there comparator was a little different, but still
just a few instructions, as with float-based timestamps (I don't care
enough about them to provide one in core, though). It would also
essentially allow for user-defined sort functions, provided they
fulfilled a basic interface. They may not even have to be
comparison-based. I know that I expressed scepticism about the weird
and wonderful ideas that some people have put forward in that area,
but that's mostly because I don't think that GPU based sorting in a
database is going to be practical.
Why not add this capability to the SortSupport API, given that it
wouldn't be very hard? The user would set the enum too, so it would
appear in explain analyze output as "custom sort" or something like
that.
While a sorting specialisation of our qsort_arg is actually pretty
close to optimal for scalar types and façades thereof, there could be
a type that would benefit from using radix sort, for example, which
isn't even comparison-based, and a user couldn't very well do that
with the existing SortSupport API.
I certainly don't care about this capability enough to defend it
against any objections that anyone may have, especially at this late
stage in the cycle. I just think that we might as well have it.
--
Peter Geoghegan http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training and Services
