Re: delta relations in AFTER triggers

On 10/22/2014 11:10 PM, Robert Haas wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 1:51 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>>>> Add a new p_tableref_hook function pointer, similar to p_paramref_hook.
>>>> Whenever the parser sees a RangeVar that it doesn't recognize (or actually,
>>>> I think it should call it *before* resolving regular tables, but let's
>>>> ignore that for now), it calls the p_tableref_hook. It can return a new
>>>> RelationParam node (similar to regular Param), which contains a numeric ID
>>>> for the table/tuplestore, as well as its tuple descriptor.
>>>>
>>>> For the execution phase, add a new array of Tuplestorestates to
>>>> ParamListInfo. Similar to the existing array of ParamExternalDatas.
>>
>>> I haven't been following this issue closely, but this sounds like a
>>> really nice design.
>>
>> I'm on board with the parser hooks part of that.  I don't especially agree
>> with the idea of a new sub-structure for ParamListInfo: if you do that you
>> will need a whole bunch of new boilerplate infrastructure to allocate,
>> copy, and generally manage that structure, for darn little gain.  What I'd
>> suggest is just saying that some Params might have type INTERNAL with
>> Datum values that are pointers to tuplestores; then all you need to do is
>> remember which Param number has been assigned to the particular tuplestore
>> you want.  There is already precedent for that in the recursive CTE code,
>> IIRC.
>
> Studying this proposed design a bit further, I am a little fuzzy on
> what is supposed to happen in this design during parse analysis.  In
> Kevin's current code, after checking whether a RangeVar might be a CTE
> reference and before deciding that it must be a table reference,
> scanNameSpaceForTsr() is used to check whether there's a tuplestore by
> that name and, if so, then we insert a RTE with type RTE_TUPLESTORE
> which references the tuplestore by name.  To me, the obvious thing to
> do here seems to be to instead call p_tableref_hook and let it return
> a suitable RangeTblRef (or NULL if it wishes to take no action).  In
> the case where the hook wants to redirect the use of that name to a
> tuplestore, it can add a range-table entry of type RTE_TUPLESTORE, and
> that entry can store a parameter-index rather than, as in the current
> design, a name.  But then where does Heikki's notion of a
> RelationParam get used?

I was thinking that the hook would return a RelationParam. When parse 
analysis sees the returned RelationParam, it adds an entry for that to 
the range table, and creates the RangeTblRef for it. The way you 
describe it works too, but manipulating the range table directly in the 
hook seems a bit too low-level.

- Heikki