The original security barrier view implementation, on which RLS is
built, prevented all non-leakproof functions from being pushed down to
below the view, even when the function was not receiving any data from
the view. This optimization improves on that situation by, instead of
checking strictly for non-leakproof functions, it checks for Vars being
passed to non-leakproof functions and allows functions which do not
accept arguments or whose arguments are not from the current query level
(eg: constants can be particularly useful) to be pushed down.
As discussed, this does mean that a function which is pushed down might
gain some idea that there are rows meeting a certain criteria based on
the number of times the function is called, but this isn't a
particularly new issue and the documentation in rules.sgml already
addressed similar covert-channel risks. That documentation is updated
to reflect that non-leakproof functions may be pushed down now, if
they meet the above-described criteria.
Author: Dean Rasheed, with a bit of rework to make things clearer,
along with comment and documentation updates from me.
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