< Currently indexes do not have enough tuple tuple visibility
< information to allow data to be pulled from the index without
< also accessing the heap. One way to allow this is to set a bit
< to index tuples to indicate if a tuple is currently visible to
< all transactions when the first valid heap lookup happens. This
< bit would have to be cleared when a heap tuple is expired.
> Currently indexes do not have enough tuple visibility information
> to allow data to be pulled from the index without also accessing
> the heap. One way to allow this is to set a bit to index tuples
> to indicate if a tuple is currently visible to all transactions
> when the first valid heap lookup happens. This bit would have to
> be cleared when a heap tuple is expired.
< Bitmap indexes index single columns that can be combined with other bitmap
< indexes to dynamically create a composite index to match a specific query.
< Each index is a bitmap, and the bitmaps are bitwise AND'ed or OR'ed to be
< combined. They can index by tid or can be lossy requiring a scan of the
< heap page to find matching rows, or perhaps use a mixed solution where
< tids are recorded for pages with only a few matches and per-page bitmaps
< are used for more dense pages. Another idea is to use a 32-bit bitmap
< for every page and set a bit based on the item number mod(32).
> This feature allows separate indexes to be ANDed or ORed together. This
> is particularly useful for data warehousing applications that need to
> query the database in an many permutations. This feature scans an index
> and creates an in-memory bitmap, and allows that bitmap to be combined
> with other bitmap created in a similar way. The bitmap can either index
> all TIDs, or be lossy, meaning it records just page numbers and each
> page tuple has to be checked for validity in a separate pass.
