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mirror of https://github.com/postgres/postgres.git synced 2025-05-02 11:44:50 +03:00
Tom Lane de97072e3c Allow merge and hash joins to occur on arbitrary expressions (anything not
containing a volatile function), rather than only on 'Var = Var' clauses
as before.  This makes it practical to do flatten_join_alias_vars at the
start of planning, which in turn eliminates a bunch of klugery inside the
planner to deal with alias vars.  As a free side effect, we now detect
implied equality of non-Var expressions; for example in
	SELECT ... WHERE a.x = b.y and b.y = 42
we will deduce a.x = 42 and use that as a restriction qual on a.  Also,
we can remove the restriction introduced 12/5/02 to prevent pullup of
subqueries whose targetlists contain sublinks.
Still TODO: make statistical estimation routines in selfuncs.c and costsize.c
smarter about expressions that are more complex than plain Vars.  The need
for this is considerably greater now that we have to be able to estimate
the suitability of merge and hash join techniques on such expressions.
2003-01-15 19:35:48 +00:00
..

*******************************************************************************
*                                                                             *
* EXPLANATION OF THE NODE STRUCTURES                                          *
*    - Andrew Yu (11/94)                                                      *
*                                                                             *
* Copyright (c) 1994, Regents of the University of California                 *
*                                                                             *
* $Id: README,v 1.1.1.1 1996/07/09 06:21:32 scrappy Exp $
*                                                                             *
*******************************************************************************

INTRODUCTION

The current node structures are plain old C structures. "Inheritance" is
achieved by convention. No additional functions will be generated. Functions
that manipulate node structures reside in this directory.


FILES IN THIS DIRECTORY

    Node manipulation functions:
	copyfuncs.c	- copying a node
	equalfuncs.c	- comparing a node
	outfuncs.c	- convert a node to ascii representation
	readfuncs.c	- convert ascii representation back to a node
	makefuncs.c	- creator functions for primitive nodes

    Node definitions:
	nodes.h		- define node tags (NodeTag)
	pg_list.h	- generic list 
	primnodes.h	- primitive nodes
	parsenodes.h	- parse tree nodes
	plannodes.h	- plan tree nodes
	relation.h	- inner plan tree nodes
	execnodes.h	- executor nodes
	memnodes.h	- memory nodes


STEPS TO ADD A NODE

Suppose you wana define a node Foo:

1. add a tag (T_Foo) to the enum NodeTag in nodes.h (You may have to
   recompile the whole tree after doing this.)
2. add the structure definition to the appropriate ???nodes.h file. If you
   intend to inherit from, say a Plan node, put Plan as the first field of
   you definition.
3. if you intend to use copyObject, equal, nodeToString or stringToNode,
   add an appropriate function to copyfuncs.c, equalfuncs.c, outfuncs.c
   and readfuncs.c accordingly. (Except for frequently used nodes, don't
   bother writing a creator function in makefuncs.c)


HISTORICAL NOTE

Prior to the current simple C structure definitions, the Node structures 
uses a pseudo-inheritance system which automatically generates creator and
accessor functions. Since every node inherits from LispValue, the whole thing
is a mess. Here's a little anecdote:

    LispValue definition -- class used to support lisp structures
    in C.  This is here because we did not want to totally rewrite
    planner and executor code which depended on lisp structures when
    we ported postgres V1 from lisp to C. -cim 4/23/90