I saw on a summary for 8.4 that there's a generic function for use as a
before row trigger that will elide null updates (ie replacement with an
identical row).
I can see that this is great - but I was wondering if it should be more
integrated and turned on in the db schema.
Trivially, doing so would mean that there is less of an issue trying to
integrate with a custom user before trigger, although that's really no
more than an inconvenience.
I understand that there is an argument for not making it the default
behaviour given that trigger execution and locking are both affected if
we do elide the update completely, but it occured to me that while I
might want the trigger and locking behaviour, I probably never want the
actual database image copy to happen. Doing so will needlessly bloat the
database file and give the vacuum procedure work to do - and it seems
interfere with the new optimisations relating to pages that are all
visible in all transactions.
Would it be possible to determine a null update cheaply and retain the
locking and trigger execution, but elide the actual row copy - and in
particular the associated impact in terms of setting status flags etc?
I guess this would need to be handled at a lower level than the trigger
approach - and would need an option that is integrated into the schema,
so we can elide the copy, and optionally the trigger execution, and
optionally the lock.
James