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Evaluation of set returning functions (SRFs_ in the targetlist (like SELECT generate_series(1,5)) so far was done in the expression evaluation (i.e. ExecEvalExpr()) and projection (i.e. ExecProject/ExecTargetList) code. This meant that most executor nodes performing projection, and most expression evaluation functions, had to deal with the possibility that an evaluated expression could return a set of return values. That's bad because it leads to repeated code in a lot of places. It also, and that's my (Andres's) motivation, made it a lot harder to implement a more efficient way of doing expression evaluation. To fix this, introduce a new executor node (ProjectSet) that can evaluate targetlists containing one or more SRFs. To avoid the complexity of the old way of handling nested expressions returning sets (e.g. having to pass up ExprDoneCond, and dealing with arguments to functions returning sets etc.), those SRFs can only be at the top level of the node's targetlist. The planner makes sure (via split_pathtarget_at_srfs()) that SRF evaluation is only necessary in ProjectSet nodes and that SRFs are only present at the top level of the node's targetlist. If there are nested SRFs the planner creates multiple stacked ProjectSet nodes. The ProjectSet nodes always get input from an underlying node. We also discussed and prototyped evaluating targetlist SRFs using ROWS FROM(), but that turned out to be more complicated than we'd hoped. While moving SRF evaluation to ProjectSet would allow to retain the old "least common multiple" behavior when multiple SRFs are present in one targetlist (i.e. continue returning rows until all SRFs are at the end of their input at the same time), we decided to instead only return rows till all SRFs are exhausted, returning NULL for already exhausted ones. We deemed the previous behavior to be too confusing, unexpected and actually not particularly useful. As a side effect, the previously prohibited case of multiple set returning arguments to a function, is now allowed. Not because it's particularly desirable, but because it ends up working and there seems to be no argument for adding code to prohibit it. Currently the behavior for COALESCE and CASE containing SRFs has changed, returning multiple rows from the expression, even when the SRF containing "arm" of the expression is not evaluated. That's because the SRFs are evaluated in a separate ProjectSet node. As that's quite confusing, we're likely to instead prohibit SRFs in those places. But that's still being discussed, and the code would reside in places not touched here, so that's a task for later. There's a lot of, now superfluous, code dealing with set return expressions around. But as the changes to get rid of those are verbose largely boring, it seems better for readability to keep the cleanup as a separate commit. Author: Tom Lane and Andres Freund Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/20160822214023.aaxz5l4igypowyri@alap3.anarazel.de
src/backend/nodes/README
Node Structures
===============
Andrew Yu (11/94)
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 (src/backend/nodes/)
General-purpose node manipulation functions:
copyfuncs.c - copy a node tree
equalfuncs.c - compare two node trees
outfuncs.c - convert a node tree to text representation
readfuncs.c - convert text representation back to a node tree
makefuncs.c - creator functions for some common node types
nodeFuncs.c - some other general-purpose manipulation functions
Specialized manipulation functions:
bitmapset.c - Bitmapset support
list.c - generic list support
params.c - Param support
tidbitmap.c - TIDBitmap support
value.c - support for Value nodes
FILES IN src/include/nodes/
Node definitions:
nodes.h - define node tags (NodeTag)
primnodes.h - primitive nodes
parsenodes.h - parse tree nodes
plannodes.h - plan tree nodes
relation.h - planner internal nodes
execnodes.h - executor nodes
memnodes.h - memory nodes
pg_list.h - generic list
Steps to Add a Node
-------------------
Suppose you want to define a node Foo:
1. Add a tag (T_Foo) to the enum NodeTag in nodes.h. (If you insert the
tag in a way that moves the numbers associated with existing tags,
you'll need to recompile the whole tree after doing this. It doesn't
force initdb though, because the numbers never go to disk.)
2. Add the structure definition to the appropriate include/nodes/???.h file.
If you intend to inherit from, say a Plan node, put Plan as the first field
of your struct 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) The header comments
in those files give general rules for whether you need to add support.
4. Add cases to the functions in nodeFuncs.c as needed. There are many
other places you'll probably also need to teach about your new node
type. Best bet is to grep for references to one or two similar existing
node types to find all the places to touch.
Historical Note
---------------
Prior to the current simple C structure definitions, the Node structures
used a pseudo-inheritance system which automatically generated creator and
accessor functions. Since every node inherited from LispValue, the whole thing
was 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