Re: [HACKERS] [RFC] What would be difficult to make data modelspluggable for making PostgreSQL a multi-model database?

From: Chris Travers
> Why cannot you do all this in a language handler and treat as a user
defined function?
> ...
> If you have a language handler for cypher, why do you need in_region
or cast_region?  Why not just have a graph_search() function which
takes in a cypher query and returns a set of records?

The language handler is for *stored* functions.  The user-defined
function (UDF) doesn't participate in the planning of the outer
(top-level) query.  And they both assume that they are executed in SQL
commands.

I want the data models to meet these:

1) The query language can be used as a top-level session language.
For example, if an app specifies "region=cypher_graph" at database
connection, it can use the database as a graph database and submit
Cypher queries without embedding them in SQL.

2) When a query contains multiple query fragments of different data
models, all those fragments are parsed and planned before execution.
The planner comes up with the best plan, crossing the data model
boundary.  To take the query example in my first mail, which joins a
relational table and the result of a graph query.  The relational
planner considers how to scan the table, the graph planner considers
how to search the graph, and the relational planner considers how to
join the two fragments.

So in_region() and cast_region() are not functions to be executed
during execution phase, but are syntax constructs that are converted,
during analysis phase, into calls to another region's parser/analyzer
and an inter-model cast routine.

1. The relational parser finds in_region('cypher_graph', 'graph
query') and produces a parse node InRegion(region_name, query) in the
parse tree.

2. The relational analyzer looks up the system catalog to checks if
the specified region exists, then calls its parser/analyzer to produce
the query tree for the graph query fragment.  The relational analyser
attaches the graph query tree to the InRegion node.

3. When the relational planner finds the graph query tree, it passes
the graph query tree to the graph planner to produce the graph
execution plan.

4. The relational planner produces a join plan node, based on the
costs/statistics of the relational table scan and graph query.  The
graph execution plan is attached to the join plan node.

The parse/query/plan nodes have a label to denote a region, so that
appropriate region's routines can be called.

Regards
MauMau