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Robert Haas bbe0a81db6 Allow configurable LZ4 TOAST compression.
There is now a per-column COMPRESSION option which can be set to pglz
(the default, and the only option in up until now) or lz4. Or, if you
like, you can set the new default_toast_compression GUC to lz4, and
then that will be the default for new table columns for which no value
is specified. We don't have lz4 support in the PostgreSQL code, so
to use lz4 compression, PostgreSQL must be built --with-lz4.

In general, TOAST compression means compression of individual column
values, not the whole tuple, and those values can either be compressed
inline within the tuple or compressed and then stored externally in
the TOAST table, so those properties also apply to this feature.

Prior to this commit, a TOAST pointer has two unused bits as part of
the va_extsize field, and a compessed datum has two unused bits as
part of the va_rawsize field. These bits are unused because the length
of a varlena is limited to 1GB; we now use them to indicate the
compression type that was used. This means we only have bit space for
2 more built-in compresison types, but we could work around that
problem, if necessary, by introducing a new vartag_external value for
any further types we end up wanting to add. Hopefully, it won't be
too important to offer a wide selection of algorithms here, since
each one we add not only takes more coding but also adds a build
dependency for every packager. Nevertheless, it seems worth doing
at least this much, because LZ4 gets better compression than PGLZ
with less CPU usage.

It's possible for LZ4-compressed datums to leak into composite type
values stored on disk, just as it is for PGLZ. It's also possible for
LZ4-compressed attributes to be copied into a different table via SQL
commands such as CREATE TABLE AS or INSERT .. SELECT.  It would be
expensive to force such values to be decompressed, so PostgreSQL has
never done so. For the same reasons, we also don't force recompression
of already-compressed values even if the target table prefers a
different compression method than was used for the source data.  These
architectural decisions are perhaps arguable but revisiting them is
well beyond the scope of what seemed possible to do as part of this
project.  However, it's relatively cheap to recompress as part of
VACUUM FULL or CLUSTER, so this commit adjusts those commands to do
so, if the configured compression method of the table happens not to
match what was used for some column value stored therein.

Dilip Kumar. The original patches on which this work was based were
written by Ildus Kurbangaliev, and those were patches were based on
even earlier work by Nikita Glukhov, but the design has since changed
very substantially, since allow a potentially large number of
compression methods that could be added and dropped on a running
system proved too problematic given some of the architectural issues
mentioned above; the choice of which specific compression method to
add first is now different; and a lot of the code has been heavily
refactored.  More recently, Justin Przyby helped quite a bit with
testing and reviewing and this version also includes some code
contributions from him. Other design input and review from Tomas
Vondra, Álvaro Herrera, Andres Freund, Oleg Bartunov, Alexander
Korotkov, and me.

Discussion: http://postgr.es/m/20170907194236.4cefce96%40wp.localdomain
Discussion: http://postgr.es/m/CAFiTN-uUpX3ck%3DK0mLEk-G_kUQY%3DSNOTeqdaNRR9FMdQrHKebw%40mail.gmail.com
2021-03-19 15:10:38 -04:00
config Update copyright for 2021 2021-01-02 13:06:25 -05:00
contrib Allow configurable LZ4 TOAST compression. 2021-03-19 15:10:38 -04:00
doc Allow configurable LZ4 TOAST compression. 2021-03-19 15:10:38 -04:00
src Allow configurable LZ4 TOAST compression. 2021-03-19 15:10:38 -04:00
.dir-locals.el Make Emacs perl-mode indent more like perltidy. 2019-01-13 11:32:31 -08:00
.editorconfig Add .editorconfig 2019-12-18 09:13:13 +01:00
.gitattributes gitattributes: Add new file 2019-11-12 08:13:55 +01:00
.gitignore Support for optimizing and emitting code in LLVM JIT provider. 2018-03-22 11:05:22 -07:00
COPYRIGHT Update copyright for 2021 2021-01-02 13:06:25 -05:00
GNUmakefile.in Make install-tests target work with vpath builds 2020-05-31 18:33:00 -04:00
HISTORY Canonicalize some URLs 2020-02-10 20:47:50 +01:00
Makefile Don't unset MAKEFLAGS in non-GNU Makefile. 2019-06-25 09:36:21 +12:00
README Canonicalize some URLs 2020-02-10 20:47:50 +01:00
README.git Canonicalize some URLs 2020-02-10 20:47:50 +01:00
aclocal.m4 Remove configure-time probe for DocBook DTD. 2020-11-30 15:24:13 -05:00
configure Allow configurable LZ4 TOAST compression. 2021-03-19 15:10:38 -04:00
configure.ac Allow configurable LZ4 TOAST compression. 2021-03-19 15:10:38 -04:00

README

PostgreSQL Database Management System
=====================================

This directory contains the source code distribution of the PostgreSQL
database management system.

PostgreSQL is an advanced object-relational database management system
that supports an extended subset of the SQL standard, including
transactions, foreign keys, subqueries, triggers, user-defined types
and functions.  This distribution also contains C language bindings.

PostgreSQL has many language interfaces, many of which are listed here:

	https://www.postgresql.org/download/

See the file INSTALL for instructions on how to build and install
PostgreSQL.  That file also lists supported operating systems and
hardware platforms and contains information regarding any other
software packages that are required to build or run the PostgreSQL
system.  Copyright and license information can be found in the
file COPYRIGHT.  A comprehensive documentation set is included in this
distribution; it can be read as described in the installation
instructions.

The latest version of this software may be obtained at
https://www.postgresql.org/download/.  For more information look at our
web site located at https://www.postgresql.org/.