This has been saved for the 8.4 release: http://momjian.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/pgpatches_hold
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Simon Riggs wrote: > We've changed the on-disk database format in 8.3, so we have an > opportunity to change other things also. There is a patch thats been on > the patch queue for some time called numeric508, submitted Dec 2005; > I've updated this patch now for 8.3 to remove bit rot (an hour's work). > This is posted to pgsql-patches now and it works. > > The benefit of the patch is that it reduces each NUMERIC value by 2 > bytes, so will speed up things considerably. This is now especially > important if we are looking to reduce the speed of numeric division by a > factor of 4 (recent WIP patch). > > The objections to applying this patch originally were: > 1. it changes on-disk format (we've done this, so argument is void) > 2. it would restrict number of digits to 508 and there are allegedly > some people that want to store > 508 digits. > > The current patch passes all regression tests, but currently fails > numeric_big.sql since this explicitly checks for support of > numeric(1000,800). > > We could: > a) accept the patch as-is and restrict NUMERIC to 508 digits > b) refine the patch somewhat to allow 1000 digits > > (b) is possible in a couple of ways, both fairly quick: > - extend the patch so that one of the spare bits from the second digit > is used to represent dscale 508-1000. > - extend the patch so that if weight > 127 or dscale > 127 we would use > the first byte in the digits as an extra indicator byte holding the high > bits of both fields. > Neither change makes any difference to numbers below > 1,000,000,000,000,000....(127 zeroes in total)...000 which probably > covers the vast majority of people's usage. > > Objections: True, we are passed feature freeze, but this patch has been > on the queue for 14 months prior to freeze and has been waiting on disk > format changes to make patch application acceptable. We definitely want > to reduce the size of Numeric by 2 bytes at some point. The question in > my mind is: When is the best time to make this change? If we put this > off until 8.4, then it will get rejected again because we won't want to > change the disk format again. So the best time to do this is now, > otherwise we'll put it off forever. > > Can I get somebody other than Tom to agree to review the patch? Clearly > waiting for Tom to review this is just going to delay release, which I > don't want to do. > > -- > Simon Riggs > EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com > > > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend -- Bruce Momjian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. + ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 7: You can help support the PostgreSQL project by donating at http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate