Message-ID: <4C911058.1050005@enterprisedb.com>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 21:28:40 +0300
From: Heikki Linnakangas <heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com>
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To: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
CC: SAKAMOTO Masahiko <sakamoto.masahiko@oss.ntt.co.jp>,
	pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: patch: SQL/MED(FDW) DDL
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	<AANLkTimSga5zVCshB98_HzKnvgn5q90aW_qaDyKHhvn2@mail.gmail.com>
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On 15/09/10 21:21, Robert Haas wrote:
> I wonder if we might not think of the foreign data wrapper problem as
> an instance of an even more general problem.  Right now, we have
> semi-pluggable index access methods - it's probably not quite possible
> to implement one as a standalone module because of XLOG, and maybe
> other reasons, but at least there's some abstraction layer there.
> Perhaps we should be thinking about a similar facility of table-access
> methods.  What if someone wants to implement column-oriented storage,
> or index-organized tables, or or tables that are really slow under
> heavy write loads but can instantaneously compute SELECT COUNT(*) FROM
> table, or mauve-colored tables with magic pixie dust?  I don't want to
> raise the bar for this project to the point where we can never get it
> off the ground, but if there's a way to avoid baking in the assumption
> that only foreign tables can ever have special capabilities, that
> might be valuable.

Well, you could implement all that as a foreign data wrappers. Tables 
made out of pixie dust feels pretty foreign to me ;-).

-- 
   Heikki Linnakangas
   EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com