Multiranges are basically sorted arrays of non-overlapping ranges with
set-theoretic operations defined over them.
Since v14, each range type automatically gets a corresponding multirange
datatype. There are both manual and automatic mechanisms for naming multirange
types. Once can specify multirange type name using multirange_type_name
attribute in CREATE TYPE. Otherwise, a multirange type name is generated
automatically. If the range type name contains "range" then we change that to
"multirange". Otherwise, we add "_multirange" to the end.
Implementation of multiranges comes with a space-efficient internal
representation format, which evades extra paddings and duplicated storage of
oids. Altogether this format allows fetching a particular range by its index
in O(n).
Statistic gathering and selectivity estimation are implemented for multiranges.
For this purpose, stored multirange is approximated as union range without gaps.
This field will likely need improvements in the future.
Catversion is bumped.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CALNJ-vSUpQ_Y%3DjXvTxt1VYFztaBSsWVXeF1y6gTYQ4bOiWDLgQ%40mail.gmail.com
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/a0b8026459d1e6167933be2104a6174e7d40d0ab.camel%40j-davis.com#fe7218c83b08068bfffb0c5293eceda0
Author: Paul Jungwirth, revised by me
Reviewed-by: David Fetter, Corey Huinker, Jeff Davis, Pavel Stehule
Reviewed-by: Alvaro Herrera, Tom Lane, Isaac Morland, David G. Johnston
Reviewed-by: Zhihong Yu, Alexander Korotkov
Use the term "system catalog" rather than "system relation" in assorted
places where it's clearly referring to a table rather than, say, an
index. Use more natural word order in the header boilerplate, improve
some of the one-liner catalog descriptions, and fix assorted random
deviations from the normal boilerplate. All purely neatnik-ism, but
why not.
John Naylor, some additional cleanup by me
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAJVSVGUeJmFB3h-NJ18P32NPa+kzC165nm7GSoGHfPaN80Wxcw@mail.gmail.com
Historically, the initial catalog data to be installed during bootstrap
has been written in DATA() lines in the catalog header files. This had
lots of disadvantages: the format was badly underdocumented, it was
very difficult to edit the data in any mechanized way, and due to the
lack of any abstraction the data was verbose, hard to read/understand,
and easy to get wrong.
Hence, move this data into separate ".dat" files and represent it in a way
that can easily be read and rewritten by Perl scripts. The new format is
essentially "key => value" for each column; while it's a bit repetitive,
explicit labeling of each value makes the data far more readable and less
error-prone. Provide a way to abbreviate entries by omitting field values
that match a specified default value for their column. This allows removal
of a large amount of repetitive boilerplate and also lowers the barrier to
adding new columns.
Also teach genbki.pl how to translate symbolic OID references into
numeric OIDs for more cases than just "regproc"-like pg_proc references.
It can now do that for regprocedure-like references (thus solving the
problem that regproc is ambiguous for overloaded functions), operators,
types, opfamilies, opclasses, and access methods. Use this to turn
nearly all OID cross-references in the initial data into symbolic form.
This represents a very large step forward in readability and error
resistance of the initial catalog data. It should also reduce the
difficulty of renumbering OID assignments in uncommitted patches.
Also, solve the longstanding problem that frontend code that would like to
use OID macros and other information from the catalog headers often had
difficulty with backend-only code in the headers. To do this, arrange for
all generated macros, plus such other declarations as we deem fit, to be
placed in "derived" header files that are safe for frontend inclusion.
(Once clients migrate to using these pg_*_d.h headers, it will be possible
to get rid of the pg_*_fn.h headers, which only exist to quarantine code
away from clients. That is left for follow-on patches, however.)
The now-automatically-generated macros include the Anum_xxx and Natts_xxx
constants that we used to have to update by hand when adding or removing
catalog columns.
Replace the former manual method of generating OID macros for pg_type
entries with an automatic method, ensuring that all built-in types have
OID macros. (But note that this patch does not change the way that
OID macros for pg_proc entries are built and used. It's not clear that
making that match the other catalogs would be worth extra code churn.)
Add SGML documentation explaining what the new data format is and how to
work with it.
Despite being a very large change in the catalog headers, there is no
catversion bump here, because postgres.bki and related output files
haven't changed at all.
John Naylor, based on ideas from various people; review and minor
additional coding by me; previous review by Alvaro Herrera
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAJVSVGWO48JbbwXkJz_yBFyGYW-M9YWxnPdxJBUosDC9ou_F0Q@mail.gmail.com
Tom Lane
Bruce Momjian
Alexander Korotkov