Re: Automatic function replanning

On Tue, 2005-12-13 at 22:32 +0100, Joachim Wieland wrote:
> there's a topic that comes up from time to time on the lists, the problem
> that pgsql functions get planned only once and thereafter the same query
> plan is used until server shutdown or explicit recreation of the function.

The problem really has nothing to do with functions, per se: whenever a
plan is created and then stored for future use, the assumptions made by
that plan may be invalidated by the time the plan is executed. This
applies to PREPARE, pl/pgsql functions, perhaps the plan caching done by
the RI triggers, and so forth.

I also think that invalidating cached plans on a periodic basis is the
wrong approach -- we can use sinval to invalidate plans as soon as a
dependent database object changes and not before. This thread contains
some ideas on how to do this:
   http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2005-03/msg00426.php

I got somewhat sidetracked by the complexities of the "central plan
caching module" that Tom would like to see, but I'm still hoping to take
a look at this for 8.2.

-Neil