is contention for a tuple-level lock. This solves the problem of a
would-be exclusive locker being starved out by an indefinite succession
of share-lockers. Per recent discussion with Alvaro.
Essentially, we shoehorn in a lockable-object-type field by taking
a byte away from the lockmethodid, which can surely fit in one byte
instead of two. This allows less artificial definitions of all the
other fields of LOCKTAG; we can get rid of the special pg_xactlock
pseudo-relation, and also support locks on individual tuples and
general database objects (including shared objects). None of those
possibilities are actually exploited just yet, however.
I removed pg_xactlock from pg_class, but did not force initdb for
that change. At this point, relkind 's' (SPECIAL) is unused and
could be removed entirely.
to eliminate unnecessary deadlocks. This commit adds SELECT ... FOR SHARE
paralleling SELECT ... FOR UPDATE. The implementation uses a new SLRU
data structure (managed much like pg_subtrans) to represent multiple-
transaction-ID sets. When more than one transaction is holding a shared
lock on a particular row, we create a MultiXactId representing that set
of transactions and store its ID in the row's XMAX. This scheme allows
an effectively unlimited number of row locks, just as we did before,
while not costing any extra overhead except when a shared lock actually
has to be shared. Still TODO: use the regular lock manager to control
the grant order when multiple backends are waiting for a row lock.
Alvaro Herrera and Tom Lane.
indexes. Replace all heap_openr and index_openr calls by heap_open
and index_open. Remove runtime lookups of catalog OID numbers in
various places. Remove relcache's support for looking up system
catalogs by name. Bulky but mostly very boring patch ...
transaction rollback via UNDO but I think that's highly unlikely to
happen, so we may as well remove the stubs. (Someday we ought to
rip out the stub xxx_undo routines, too.) Per Alvaro.
access: define new index access method functions 'amgetmulti' that can
fetch multiple TIDs per call. (The functions exist but are totally
untested as yet.) Since I was modifying pg_am anyway, remove the
no-longer-needed 'rel' parameter from amcostestimate functions, and
also remove the vestigial amowner column that was creating useless
work for Alvaro's shared-object-dependencies project.
Initdb forced due to changes in pg_am.
convention for isnull flags. Also, remove the useless InsertIndexResult
return struct from index AM aminsert calls --- there is no reason for
the caller to know where in the index the tuple was inserted, and we
were wasting a palloc cycle per insert to deliver this uninteresting
value (plus nontrivial complexity in some AMs).
I forced initdb because of the change in the signature of the aminsert
routines, even though nothing really looks at those pg_proc entries...
a tuple are being accessed via ExecEvalVar and the attcacheoff shortcut
isn't usable (due to nulls and/or varlena columns). To do this, cache
Datums extracted from a tuple in the associated TupleTableSlot.
Also some code cleanup in and around the TupleTable handling.
Atsushi Ogawa with some kibitzing by Tom Lane.
the AMI_OVERRIDE flag. The fact that TransactionLogFetch treats
BootstrapTransactionId as always committed is sufficient to make
bootstrap work, and getting rid of extra tests in heavily used code
paths seems like a win. The files produced by initdb are demonstrably
the same after this change.
Also performed an initial run through of upgrading our Copyright date to
extend to 2005 ... first run here was very simple ... change everything
where: grep 1996-2004 && the word 'Copyright' ... scanned through the
generated list with 'less' first, and after, to make sure that I only
picked up the right entries ...
buffer is valid, as ReadBuffer() will elog on error. Most of the call
sites of ReadBuffer() got this right, but this patch fixes those call
sites that did not.
in all cases when keep_buf = true. This allows ANALYZE's inner loop to
use heap_release_fetch, which saves multiple buffer lookups for the same
page and avoids overestimation of cost by the vacuum cost mechanism.
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2004-10/msg00464.php.
This fix is intended to be permanent: it moves the responsibility for
calling SetBufferCommitInfoNeedsSave() into the tqual.c routines,
eliminating the requirement for callers to test whether t_infomask changed.
Also, tighten validity checking on buffer IDs in bufmgr.c --- several
routines were paranoid about out-of-range shared buffer numbers but not
about out-of-range local ones, which seems a tad pointless.
to unreserved keyword, use ereport not elog, assign a separate error code
for 'could not obtain lock' so that applications will be able to detect
that case cleanly.
now are supposed to take some kind of lock on an index whenever you
are going to access the index contents, rather than relying only on a
lock on the parent table.
creating a new tuple. This is just for debugging sanity, though, since
nothing should be paying any attention to xmax when the HEAP_XMAX_INVALID
bit is set.
as per recent discussions. Invent SubTransactionIds that are managed like
CommandIds (ie, counter is reset at start of each top transaction), and
use these instead of TransactionIds to keep track of subtransaction status
in those modules that need it. This means that a subtransaction does not
need an XID unless it actually inserts/modifies rows in the database.
Accordingly, don't assign it an XID nor take a lock on the XID until it
tries to do that. This saves a lot of overhead for subtransactions that
are only used for error recovery (eg plpgsql exceptions). Also, arrange
to release a subtransaction's XID lock as soon as the subtransaction
exits, in both the commit and abort cases. This avoids holding many
unique locks after a long series of subtransactions. The price is some
additional overhead in XactLockTableWait, but that seems acceptable.
Finally, restructure the state machine in xact.c to have a more orthogonal
set of states for subtransactions.
((Snapshot) NULL) can no longer be confused with a valid snapshot,
as per my recent suggestion. Define a macro InvalidSnapshot for 0.
Use InvalidSnapshot instead of SnapshotAny as the do-nothing special
case for heap_update and heap_delete crosschecks; this seems a little
cleaner even though the behavior is really the same.
relcache entries. Also, change TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId()
so that if consulted during transaction abort, it will not say that
the aborted xact is still current. (It would be better to ensure that
it's never called at all during abort, but I'm not sure we can easily
guarantee that.) In combination, these fix a crash we have seen
occasionally during parallel regression tests of 8.0.
recovery more manageable. Also, undo recent change to add FILE_HEADER
and WASTED_SPACE records to XLOG; instead make the XLOG page header
variable-size with extra fields in the first page of an XLOG file.
This should fix the boundary-case bugs observed by Mark Kirkwood.
initdb forced due to change of XLOG representation.
shift support code into heapam.c accordingly. This is in service of
soon-to-be-committed ALTER TABLE SET TABLESPACE code that will want to
use this same record type for both heaps and indexes.
Theoretically I should have forced initdb for this, but in practice there
is no change in xlog contents because CVS tip will never really emit this
record type anyhow...
There are various things left to do: contrib dbsize and oid2name modules
need work, and so does the documentation. Also someone should think about
COMMENT ON TABLESPACE and maybe RENAME TABLESPACE. Also initlocation is
dead, it just doesn't know it yet.
Gavin Sherry and Tom Lane.
1. Solve the problem of not having TOAST references hiding inside composite
values by establishing the rule that toasting only goes one level deep:
a tuple can contain toasted fields, but a composite-type datum that is
to be inserted into a tuple cannot. Enforcing this in heap_formtuple
is relatively cheap and it avoids a large increase in the cost of running
the tuptoaster during final storage of a row.
2. Fix some interesting problems in expansion of inherited queries that
reference whole-row variables. We never really did this correctly before,
but it's now relatively painless to solve by expanding the parent's
whole-row Var into a RowExpr() selecting the proper columns from the
child.
If you dike out the preventive check in CheckAttributeType(),
composite-type columns now seem to actually work. However, we surely
cannot ship them like this --- without I/O for composite types, you
can't get pg_dump to dump tables containing them. So a little more
work still to do.
loop over the fields instead of a loop around heap_getattr. This is
considerably faster (O(N) instead of O(N^2)) when there are nulls or
varlena fields, since those prevent use of attcacheoff. Replace loops
over heap_getattr with heap_deformtuple in situations where all or most
of the fields have to be fetched, such as printtup and tuptoaster.
Profiling done more than a year ago shows that this should be a nice
win for situations involving many-column tables.
of ThisStartUpID and RedoRecPtr into new backends. It's a lot easier just
to make them all grab the values out of shared memory during startup.
This helps to decouple the postmaster from checkpoint execution, which I
need since I'm intending to let the bgwriter do it instead, and it also
fixes a bug in the Win32 port: ThisStartUpID wasn't getting propagated at
all AFAICS. (Doesn't give me a lot of faith in the amount of testing that
port has gotten.)
costing us lots more to maintain than it was worth. On shared tables
it was of exactly zero benefit because we couldn't trust it to be
up to date. On temp tables it sometimes saved an lseek, but not often
enough to be worth getting excited about. And the real problem was that
we forced an lseek on every relcache flush in order to update the field.
So all in all it seems best to lose the complexity.
the next are handled by ReleaseAndReadBuffer rather than separate
ReleaseBuffer and ReadBuffer calls. This cuts the number of acquisitions
of the BufMgrLock by a factor of 2 (possibly more, if an indexscan happens
to pull successive rows from the same heap page). Unfortunately this
doesn't seem enough to get us out of the recently discussed context-switch
storm problem, but it's surely worth doing anyway.
results with tuples as ordinary varlena Datums. This commit does not
in itself do much for us, except eliminate the horrid memory leak
associated with evaluation of whole-row variables. However, it lays the
groundwork for allowing composite types as table columns, and perhaps
some other useful features as well. Per my proposal of a few days ago.
tuptoaster.c --- fields that are compressed in-line are not a reason
to invoke the toaster. Along the way, add a couple more htup.h macros
to eliminate confusing negated tests, and get rid of the already
vestigial TUPLE_TOASTER_ACTIVE symbol.
pointer type when it is not necessary to do so.
For future reference, casting NULL to a pointer type is only necessary
when (a) invoking a function AND either (b) the function has no prototype
OR (c) the function is a varargs function.
some concurrent changes Jan was making to the bufmgr. Here's an
updated version of the patch -- it should apply cleanly to CVS
HEAD and passes the regression tests.
This patch makes the following changes:
- remove the UnlockAndReleaseBuffer() and UnlockAndWriteBuffer()
macros, and replace uses of them with calls to the appropriate
functions.
- remove a bunch of #ifdef BMTRACE code: it is ugly & broken
(i.e. it doesn't compile)
- make BufferReplace() return a bool, not an int
- cleanup some logic in bufmgr.c; should be functionality
equivalent to the previous code, just cleaner now
- remove the BM_PRIVATE flag as it is unused
- improve a few comments, etc.
pghackers proposal of 8-Nov. All the existing cross-type comparison
operators (int2/int4/int8 and float4/float8) have appropriate support.
The original proposal of storing the right-hand-side datatype as part of
the primary key for pg_amop and pg_amproc got modified a bit in the event;
it is easier to store zero as the 'default' case and only store a nonzero
when the operator is actually cross-type. Along the way, remove the
long-since-defunct bigbox_ops operator class.
Remove the 'strategy map' code, which was a large amount of mechanism
that no longer had any use except reverse-mapping from procedure OID to
strategy number. Passing the strategy number to the index AM in the
first place is simpler and faster.
This is a preliminary step in planned support for cross-datatype index
operations. I'm committing it now since the ScanKeyEntryInitialize()
API change touches quite a lot of files, and I want to commit those
changes before the tree drifts under me.
discussion on pgsql-hackers: in READ COMMITTED mode we just have to force
a QuerySnapshot update in the trigger, but in SERIALIZABLE mode we have
to run the scan under a current snapshot and then complain if any rows
would be updated/deleted that are not visible in the transaction snapshot.
really general fix might be difficult, I believe the only case where
AtCommit_Notify could see an uncommitted tuple is where the other guy
has just unlistened and not yet committed. The best solution seems to
be to just skip updating that tuple, on the assumption that the other
guy does not want to hear about the notification anyway. This is not
perfect --- if the other guy rolls back his unlisten instead of committing,
then he really should have gotten this notify. But to do that, we'd have
to wait to see if he commits or not, or make UNLISTEN hold exclusive lock
on pg_listener until commit. Either of these answers is deadlock-prone,
not to mention horrible for interactive performance. Do it this way
for now. (What happened to that project to do LISTEN/NOTIFY in memory
with no table, anyway?)
longer works -- IncrHeapAccessStat() didn't actually *do* anything
anymore, so no reason to keep it around AFAICS. I also fixed a
grammatical error in a comment.
Neil Conway
VACUUM FULL tuple moves. Store full-width t_infomask in WAL, rather
than storing low 8 bits and expecting to be able to reconstruct upper
bits. While at it, remove redundant t_oid field from WAL headers
(the OID, if present, is now recorded in the data portion of the tuple).
WAL version number bumped --- this does not force an initdb, you can
instead run pg_resetxlog after a clean shutdown of the old postmaster.
(overlaying low byte of page size) and add HEAP_HASOID bit to t_infomask,
per earlier discussion. Simplify scheme for overlaying fields in tuple
header (no need for cmax to live in more than one place). Don't try to
clear infomask status bits in tqual.c --- not safe to do it there. Don't
try to force output table of a SELECT INTO to have OIDs, either. Get rid
of unnecessarily complex three-state scheme for TupleDesc.tdhasoids, which
has already caused one recent failure. Improve documentation.
heap_mark4update; this avoids situations where a deleted tuple might
look like it is chained to something else. Also, cause all the WAL
redo routines to set t_ctid to equal t_self, rather than leaving it
undefined as before. Make heap_xlog_clean set the page's LSN and SUI
correctly. All per past discussions in pghackers, ranging back to
last December.
The local buffer manager is no longer used for newly-created relations
(unless they are TEMP); a new non-TEMP relation goes through the shared
bufmgr and thus will participate normally in checkpoints. But TEMP relations
use the local buffer manager throughout their lifespan. Also, operations
in TEMP relations are not logged in WAL, thus improving performance.
Since it's no longer necessary to fsync relations as they move out of the
local buffers into shared buffers, quite a lot of smgr.c/md.c/fd.c code
is no longer needed and has been removed: there's no concept of a dirty
relation anymore in md.c/fd.c, and we never fsync anything but WAL.
Still TODO: improve local buffer management algorithms so that it would
be reasonable to increase NLocBuffer.
bitmap, if present).
Per Tom Lane's suggestion the information whether a tuple has an oid
or not is carried in the tuple descriptor. For debugging reasons
tdhasoid is of type char, not bool. There are predefined values for
WITHOID, WITHOUTOID and UNDEFOID.
This patch has been generated against a cvs snapshot from last week
and I don't expect it to apply cleanly to current sources. While I
post it here for public review, I'm working on a new version against a
current snapshot. (There's been heavy activity recently; hope to
catch up some day ...)
This is a long patch; if it is too hard to swallow, I can provide it
in smaller pieces:
Part 1: Accessor macros
Part 2: tdhasoid in TupDesc
Part 3: Regression test
Part 4: Parameter withoid to heap_addheader
Part 5: Eliminate t_oid from HeapTupleHeader
Part 2 is the most hairy part because of changes in the executor and
even in the parser; the other parts are straightforward.
Up to part 4 the patched postmaster stays binary compatible to
databases created with an unpatched version. Part 5 is small (100
lines) and finally breaks compatibility.
Manfred Koizar
all places, where pd_linp is accessed. Also introduce new macros
SizeOfPageHeaderData and BTMaxItemSize. This is just source code
cosmetic, no behaviour changed.
Manfred Koizar
patch from 2002-06-10, is supposed to reduce the heap tuple header size
by four bytes on most architectures. Of course it changes the on-disk
tuple format and therefore requires initdb.
This overlays cmin/cmax/xmax fields into only two fields.
Manfred Koizar
HeapTupleHeaderData in setter and getter macros called
HeapTupleHeaderGetXmin, HeapTupleHeaderSetXmin etc.
It also introduces a "virtual" field xvac by defining
HeapTupleHeaderGetXvac and HeapTupleHeaderSetXvac. Xvac is used by
VACUUM, in fact it is stored in t_cmin.
Manfred Koizar
where the latter is made slightly larger to allow for in-memory tuples
containing resjunk attributes. Responds to today's complaint that one
cannot UPDATE a table containing the allegedly-legal maximum number of
columns.
Also, apply Manfred Koizar's recent patch to avoid extra alignment padding
when there is a null bitmap. This saves bytes in some cases while not
creating any backward-compatibility problem AFAICS.
transaction, so as to avoid returning them out of the index AM. Saves
repeated heap_fetch operations on frequently-updated rows. Also detect
queries on unique keys (equality to all columns of a unique index), and
don't bother continuing scan once we have found first match.
Killing is implemented in the btree and hash AMs, but not yet in rtree
or gist, because there isn't an equally convenient place to do it in
those AMs (the outer amgetnext routine can't do it without re-pinning
the index page).
Did some small cleanup on APIs of HeapTupleSatisfies, heap_fetch, and
index_insert to make this a little easier.
in snapshots, per my proposal of a few days ago. Also, tweak heapam.c
routines (heap_insert, heap_update, heap_delete, heap_mark4update) to
be passed the command ID to use, instead of doing GetCurrentCommandID.
For catalog updates they'll still get passed current command ID, but
for updates generated from the main executor they'll get passed the
command ID saved in the snapshot the query is using. This should fix
some corner cases associated with functions and triggers that advance
current command ID while an outer query is still in progress.
yesterday's proposal to pghackers. Also remove unnecessary parameters
to heap_beginscan, heap_rescan. I modified pg_proc.h to reflect the
new numbers of parameters for the AM interface routines, but did not
force an initdb because nothing actually looks at those fields.
in schemas other than the system namespace; however, there's no search
path yet, and not all operations work yet on tables outside the system
namespace.
(current as of a few hours ago.)
This patch:
1. Adds PG_GETARG_xxx_P_SLICE() macros and associated support routines.
2. Adds routines in src/backend/access/tuptoaster.c for fetching only
necessary chunks of a toasted value. (Modelled on latest changes to
assume chunks are returned in order).
3. Amends text_substr and bytea_substr to use new methods. It now
handles multibyte cases -and should still lead to a performance
improvement in the multibyte case where the substring is near the
beginning of the string.
4. Added new command: ALTER TABLE tabname ALTER COLUMN colname SET
STORAGE {PLAIN | EXTERNAL | EXTENDED | MAIN} to parser and documented in
alter-table.sgml. (NB I used ColId as the item type for the storage
mode string, rather than a new production - I hope this makes sense!).
All this does is sets attstorage for the specified column.
4. AlterTableAlterColumnStatistics is now AlterTableAlterColumnFlags and
handles both statistics and storage (it uses the subtype code to
distinguish). The previous version of my patch also re-arranged other
code in backend/commands/command.c but I have dropped that from this
patch.(I plan to return to it separately).
5. Documented new macros (and also the PG_GETARG_xxx_P_COPY macros) in
xfunc.sgml. ref/alter_table.sgml also contains documentation for ALTER
COLUMN SET STORAGE.
John Gray
speed up repetitive failed searches; per pghackers discussion in late
January. inval.c logic substantially simplified, since we can now treat
inserts and deletes alike as far as inval events are concerned. Some
repair work needed in heap_create_with_catalog, which turns out to have
been doing CommandCounterIncrement at a point where the new relation has
non-self-consistent catalog entries. With the new inval code, that
resulted in assert failures during a relcache entry rebuild.
now just below FATAL in server_min_messages. Added more text to
highlight ordering difference between it and client_min_messages.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
REALLYFATAL => PANIC
STOP => PANIC
New INFO level the prints to client by default
New LOG level the prints to server log by default
Cause VACUUM information to print only to the client
NOTICE => INFO where purely information messages are sent
DEBUG => LOG for purely server status messages
DEBUG removed, kept as backward compatible
DEBUG5, DEBUG4, DEBUG3, DEBUG2, DEBUG1 added
DebugLvl removed in favor of new DEBUG[1-5] symbols
New server_min_messages GUC parameter with values:
DEBUG[5-1], INFO, NOTICE, ERROR, LOG, FATAL, PANIC
New client_min_messages GUC parameter with values:
DEBUG[5-1], LOG, INFO, NOTICE, ERROR, FATAL, PANIC
Server startup now logged with LOG instead of DEBUG
Remove debug_level GUC parameter
elog() numbers now start at 10
Add test to print error message if older elog() values are passed to elog()
Bootstrap mode now has a -d that requires an argument, like postmaster
mess up after an aborted VACUUM FULL, per today's pghackers discussion.
Add a suitable HeapTupleSatisfiesToast routine. Remove useless special-
case test in HeapTupleSatisfiesVisibility macro for xmax =
BootstrapTransactionId; perhaps that was needed at one time, but it's
a waste of cycles now, not to mention actively wrong for SnapshotAny.
Along the way, add some much-needed comments to tqual.c, and simplify
toast_fetch_datum, which no longer needs to assume it may see chunks
out-of-order.
to prevent spreading of corruption when page header pointers are bad.
Merge PageZero into PageInit, since it was never used separately, and
remove separate memset calls used at most other PageInit call points.
Remove IndexPageCleanup, which wasn't used at all.
recreated since the start of our transaction, our first reference to it
errored out because we'd try to reuse our old relcache entry for it.
Do this by accepting SI inval messages just before relcache search in
heap_openr, so that dead relcache entries will be flushed before we
search. Also, break heap_open/openr into two pairs of routines,
relation_open(r) and heap_open(r). The relation_open routines make
no tests on relkind and so can be used to open anything that has a
pg_class entry. The heap_open routines are wrappers that add a relkind
test to preserve their established behavior. Use the relation_open
routines in several places that had various kluge solutions for opening
rels that might be either heap or index rels.
Also, remove the old 'heap stats' code that's been superseded by Jan's
stats collector, and clean up some inconsistencies in error reporting
between the different types of ALTER TABLE.
default, but OIDS are removed from many system catalogs that don't need them.
Some interesting side effects: TOAST pointers are 20 bytes not 32 now;
pg_description has a three-column key instead of one.
Bugs fixed in passing: BINARY cursors work again; pg_class.relhaspkey
has some usefulness; pg_dump dumps comments on indexes, rules, and
triggers in a valid order.
initdb forced.
validity checking rules for VACUUM. Make some other rearrangements of the
VACUUM code to allow more code to be shared between full and lazy VACUUM.
Minor code cleanups and added comments for TransactionId manipulations.
stub) into the rest of the system. Adopt a cleaner approach to preventing
deadlock in concurrent heap_updates: allow RelationGetBufferForTuple to
select any page of the rel, and put the onus on it to lock both buffers
in a consistent order. Remove no-longer-needed isExtend hack from
API of ReleaseAndReadBuffer.
do anything yet, but it has the necessary connections to initialization
and so forth. Make some gestures towards allowing number of blocks in
a relation to be BlockNumber, ie, unsigned int, rather than signed int.
(I doubt I got all the places that are sloppy about it, yet.) On the
way, replace the hardwired NLOCKS_PER_XACT fudge factor with a GUC
variable.
appropriate pin-count manipulation, and instead use ReleaseAndReadBuffer.
Make use of the fact that the passed-in buffer (if there is one) must
be pinned to avoid grabbing the bufmgr spinlock when we are able to
return this same buffer. Eliminate unnecessary 'previous tuple' and
'next tuple' fields of HeapScanDesc and IndexScanDesc, thereby removing
a whole lot of bookkeeping from heap_getnext() and related routines.
PageGetFreeSpace() was being called while not holding the buffer lock, which
not only could yield a garbage answer, but even if it's the right answer there
might be less space available after we reacquire the buffer lock.
Also repair potential deadlock introduced by my recent performance improvement
in RelationGetBufferForTuple(): it was possible for two heap_updates to try to
lock two buffers in opposite orders. The fix creates a global rule that
buffers of a single heap relation should be locked in decreasing block number
order. Currently, this only applies to heap_update; VACUUM can get away with
ignoring the rule since it holds exclusive lock on the whole relation anyway.
However, if we try to implement a VACUUM that can run in parallel with other
transactions, VACUUM will also have to obey the lock order rule.
when we need to move to a new page; as long as we can insert the new
tuple on the same page as before, we only need LockBuffer and not the
expensive stuff. Also, twiddle bufmgr interfaces to avoid redundant
lseeks in RelationGetBufferForTuple and BufferAlloc. Successive inserts
now require one lseek per page added, rather than one per tuple with
several additional ones at each page boundary as happened before.
Lock contention when multiple backends are inserting in same table
is also greatly reduced.
a separate statement (though it can still be invoked as part of VACUUM, too).
pg_statistic redesigned to be more flexible about what statistics are
stored. ANALYZE now collects a list of several of the most common values,
not just one, plus a histogram (not just the min and max values). Random
sampling is used to make the process reasonably fast even on very large
tables. The number of values and histogram bins collected is now
user-settable via an ALTER TABLE command.
There is more still to do; the new stats are not being used everywhere
they could be in the planner. But the remaining changes for this project
should be localized, and the behavior is already better than before.
A not-very-related change is that sorting now makes use of btree comparison
routines if it can find one, rather than invoking '<' twice.
compressed storage works perfectly well. Might as well have a coherent
strategy for applying it, rather than the haphazard store-what-you-get
approach that was in the code before. The strategy I've set up here is
to attempt compression of any compressible index value exceeding
BLCKSZ/16, or about 500 bytes by default.
