70.3. Extensibility#
TheGIN interface has a high level of abstraction, requiring the access method implementer only to implement the semantics of the data type being accessed. TheGIN layer itself takes care of concurrency, logging and searching the tree structure. All it takes to get aGIN access method working is to implement a few user-defined methods, which define the behavior of keys in the tree and the relationships between keys, indexed items, and indexable queries. In short,GIN combines extensibility with generality, code reuse, and a clean interface. There are two methods that an operator class forGIN must provide: Returns a palloc'd array of keys given an item to be indexed. The number of returned keys must be stored into Returns a palloc'd array of keys given a value to be queried; that is, An operator class must also provide a function to check if an indexed item matches the query. It comes in two flavors, a Boolean In addition, GIN must have a way to sort the key values stored in the index. The operator class can define the sort ordering by specifying a comparison method: Compares two keys (not indexed items!) and returns an integer less than zero, zero, or greater than zero, indicating whether the first key is less than, equal to, or greater than the second. Null keys are never passed to this function. Alternatively, if the operator class does not provide a An operator class forGIN can optionally supply the following methods: Compare a partial-match query key to an index key. Returns an integer whose sign indicates the result: less than zero means the index key does not match the query, but the index scan should continue; zero means that the index key does match the query; greater than zero indicates that the index scan should stop because no more matches are possible. The strategy number Defines a set of user-visible parameters that control operator class behavior. The Since both key extraction of indexed values and representation of the key inGIN are flexible, they may depend on user-specified parameters. To support“partial match” queries, an operator class must provide the The actual data types of the variousDatum *extractValue(Datum itemValue, int32 *nkeys, bool **nullFlags)
*nkeys
. If any of the keys can be null, also palloc an array of*nkeys
bool
fields, store its address at*nullFlags
, and set these null flags as needed.*nullFlags
can be leftNULL
(its initial value) if all keys are non-null. The return value can beNULL
if the item contains no keys.Datum *extractQuery(Datum query, int32 *nkeys, StrategyNumber n, bool **pmatch, Pointer **extra_data, bool **nullFlags, int32 *searchMode)
query
is the value on the right-hand side of an indexable operator whose left-hand side is the indexed column.n
is the strategy number of the operator within the operator class (seeSection 38.16.2). Often,extractQuery
will need to consultn
to determine the data type ofquery
and the method it should use to extract key values. The number of returned keys must be stored into*nkeys
. If any of the keys can be null, also palloc an array of*nkeys
bool
fields, store its address at*nullFlags
, and set these null flags as needed.*nullFlags
can be leftNULL
(its initial value) if all keys are non-null. The return value can beNULL
if thequery
contains no keys.searchMode
is an output argument that allowsextractQuery
to specify details about how the search will be done. If*searchMode
is set toGIN_SEARCH_MODE_DEFAULT
(which is the value it is initialized to before call), only items that match at least one of the returned keys are considered candidate matches. If*searchMode
is set toGIN_SEARCH_MODE_INCLUDE_EMPTY
, then in addition to items containing at least one matching key, items that contain no keys at all are considered candidate matches. (This mode is useful for implementing is-subset-of operators, for example.) If*searchMode
is set toGIN_SEARCH_MODE_ALL
, then all non-null items in the index are considered candidate matches, whether they match any of the returned keys or not. (This mode is much slower than the other two choices, since it requires scanning essentially the entire index, but it may be necessary to implement corner cases correctly. An operator that needs this mode in most cases is probably not a good candidate for a GIN operator class.) The symbols to use for setting this mode are defined inaccess/gin.h
.pmatch
is an output argument for use when partial match is supported. To use it,extractQuery
must allocate an array of*nkeys
bool
s and store its address at*pmatch
. Each element of the array should be set to true if the corresponding key requires partial match, false if not. If*pmatch
is set toNULL
then GIN assumes partial match is not required. The variable is initialized toNULL
before call, so this argument can simply be ignored by operator classes that do not support partial match.extra_data
is an output argument that allowsextractQuery
to pass additional data to theconsistent
andcomparePartial
methods. To use it,extractQuery
must allocate an array of*nkeys
pointers and store its address at*extra_data
, then store whatever it wants to into the individual pointers. The variable is initialized toNULL
before call, so this argument can simply be ignored by operator classes that do not require extra data. If*extra_data
is set, the whole array is passed to theconsistent
method, and the appropriate element to thecomparePartial
method.consistent
function, and a ternarytriConsistent
function.triConsistent
covers the functionality of both, so providingtriConsistent
alone is sufficient. However, if the Boolean variant is significantly cheaper to calculate, it can be advantageous to provide both. If only the Boolean variant is provided, some optimizations that depend on refuting index items before fetching all the keys are disabled.bool consistent(bool check[], StrategyNumber n, Datum query, int32 nkeys, Pointer extra_data[], bool *recheck, Datum queryKeys[], bool nullFlags[])
int compare(Datum a, Datum b)
compare
method, GIN will look up the default btree operator class for the index key data type, and use its comparison function. It is recommended to specify the comparison function in a GIN operator class that is meant for just one data type, as looking up the btree operator class costs a few cycles. However, polymorphic GIN operator classes (such asarray_ops
) typically cannot specify a single comparison function.int comparePartial(Datum partial_key, Datum key, StrategyNumber n, Pointer extra_data)
n
of the operator that generated the partial match query is provided, in case its semantics are needed to determine when to end the scan. Also,extra_data
is the corresponding element of the extra-data array made byextractQuery
, orNULL
if none. Null keys are never passed to this function.void options(local_relopts *relopts)
options
function is passed a pointer to alocal_relopts
struct, which needs to be filled with a set of operator class specific options. The options can be accessed from other support functions using thePG_HAS_OPCLASS_OPTIONS()
andPG_GET_OPCLASS_OPTIONS()
macros.comparePartial
method, and itsextractQuery
method must set thepmatch
parameter when a partial-match query is encountered. SeeSection 70.4.2 for details.Datum
values mentioned above vary depending on the operator class. The item values passed toextractValue
are always of the operator class's input type, and all key values must be of the class'sSTORAGE
type. The type of thequery
argument passed toextractQuery
,consistent
andtriConsistent
is whatever is the right-hand input type of the class member operator identified by the strategy number. This need not be the same as the indexed type, so long as key values of the correct type can be extracted from it. However, it is recommended that the SQL declarations of these three support functions use the opclass's indexed data type for thequery
argument, even though the actual type might be something else depending on the operator.