Re: PG_PAGE_LAYOUT_VERSION 5 - time for change

Gregory Stark <stark@enterprisedb.com> writes:
> Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> writes:
>> ... 3b sounds good until you
>> reflect that a genuinely variable chunk size would preclude random
>> access to sub-ranges of a toast value.  

> Hm, Heikki had me convinced it wouldn't but now that I try to explain it I
> can't get it to work. I think the idea is you start a scan at the desired
> offset and scan until you reach a chunk which overruns the end of the desired
> piece. However you really need to start scanning at the last chunk *prior* to
> the desired offset.

Yeah, that was my conclusion too.

> I think you can actually do this with btrees but I don't know if our apis
> support it. If you scan to find the first chunk > the desired offset and then
> scan backwards one tuple you should be looking at the chunk in which the
> desired offset lies.

Well, that might work but it would typically cost you an extra fetch.
Do we really have a use case for variable chunk size that is worth the
cost?
        regards, tom lane