Re: [HACKERS] WARM and indirect indexes

On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 04:24:42PM -0300, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> Two options are on the table to attack the problem of updates causing
> write amplification: WARM and indirect indexes.  They are completely
> different approaches but have overlapping effects on what scenarios are
> improved.  Here's a recap of both features, with the intent that we make
> a well-considered decision about each.
>
> The main effect of both features is that an updated tuple doesn't
> require updating indexes that are on unmodified columns.  Indirect
> indexes are a completely new server feature which may enable other
> refinements later on; WARM is a targeted optimization on top of the HOT
> optimization.
>
> The big advantage of WARM is that it works automatically, like HOT: the
> user doesn't need to do anything different than today to get the
> benefit.  With indirect indexes, the user needs to create the index as
> indirect explicitely.

Thank you for the summary.  I think we have to consider two things with
indirect indexes:

1.  What percentage speedup is the _average_ user going to get?  You
have to consider people who will use indirect indexes who get no benefit
or a net slowdown, and users who will get a benefit.

2.  What percentage of users are going to use indirect indexes?