Re: Proposal to Enable/Disable Index using ALTER INDEX (with patch)

 

Hi,
That is a great question and I have really gone back and forth on this one and here's my reasoning so far

1. When you don't use ONLY:
   - The index of child table inherits the visibility of the parent table's index
   - This applies whether the parent index is set as INVISIBLE or VISIBLE
   - This automatic inheritance is expected behavior and feels natural

2. When you use ONLY:
   - You as a user/developer are explicitly taking control of index management
   - Creating an index for parent as INVISIBLE and another for child as VISIBLE represents conscious, deliberate choices
   - When attaching these indexes, it makes sense to respect these explicit visibility settings
   - Silently overriding the child index's visibility could violate the Principle of Least Surprise
   - Lastly, this model also allows more granular control over index visibility for each partition

I am not strongly tied to either of these options and very much open to changing my mind. Also happy to try and document this for more clarity.

I have rebased the patch on top of master (resolving some merge conflicts), along with the meson changes (thank you for that).

Thanks,
Shayon