[HACKERS] Allow GiST opcalsses without compress\decompres functions - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

Hi, hackers!

Currently, GiST stores each attribute in a compressed form.
That is, each time attribute is written it's calling compress
function, and when the attribute is accessed the decompress functions
is called.
Some types can't get any advantage out of this technique since the
context of one value is not enough for seeding effective compression
algorithm.
And we have some of the compress functions like this
Datum
gist_box_compress(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
PG_RETURN_POINTER(PG_GETARG_POINTER(0));
}

https://github.com/postgres/postgres/blob/master/src/backend/access/gist/gistproc.c#L195
https://github.com/postgres/postgres/blob/master/src/backend/utils/adt/rangetypes_gist.c#L221
https://github.com/postgres/postgres/blob/master/contrib/seg/seg.c#L255
https://github.com/postgres/postgres/blob/master/contrib/cube/cube.c#L384

Maybe we should make compress\decompress functions optional?
Also, this brings some bit of performance.
For the attached test I observe 6% faster GiST build and 4% faster scans.
Not a big deal, but something. How do you think?

In some cases, there are strange things in the code of
compress\decompress. E.g. cube's decompress function is detoasting
entry twice, to be very sure :)



Best regards, Andrey Borodin, Octonica.

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