Re: Fractal tree indexing - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Alexander Korotkov
Subject Re: Fractal tree indexing
Date
Msg-id CAPpHfdtV46zQjp88HR5U3hw-Uw7xYWrVDGgyqOE6NWYKQrtPLA@mail.gmail.com
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In response to Re: Fractal tree indexing  (Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnakangas@vmware.com>)
Responses Re: Fractal tree indexing
List pgsql-hackers
On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnakangas@vmware.com> wrote:
On 13.02.2013 11:01, Atri Sharma wrote:
Hi all,

Just a curiosity I couldnt control. I was recently reading about
Fractal tree indexing
(http://www.tokutek.com/2012/12/fractal-tree-indexing-overview/) and
how TokuDB engine for MySQL is really working nicely with big data.

Hmm, sounds very similar to the GiST buffering build work Alexander Korotkov did for 9.2. Only the buffers are for B-trees rather than GiST, and the buffers are permanent, rather than used only during index build. It's also somewhat similar to the fast insert mechanism in GIN, except that the gin fast insert buffer is just a single buffer, rather than a buffer at each node.


I was wondering, do we have support for fractal tree indexing? I mean,
it really does seem to help manage big data, so we could think of
supporting it in some form for our large data set clients( if it is
not happening already someplace which I have missed).

There are no fractal trees in PostgreSQL today. Patches are welcome ;-).

I remember we have already discussed fractal trees privately. Short conclusions are so:
1) Fractal tree indexes are patented. It is distributed as commercial extension to MySQL. So we can't include it into PostgreSQL core.
2) Tokutek can't provide full-fledged fractal tree indexes as PostgreSQL extension because lack of WAL extensibility.
We could think about WAL extensibility which would help other applications as well.

------
With best regards,
Alexander Korotkov.

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