Add commentary about varying usage of scankeys in btree code.

This commit is contained in:
Tom Lane 2000-07-25 05:26:40 +00:00
parent 916b2321ad
commit dc73e25a5e
1 changed files with 12 additions and 1 deletions

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@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
$Header: /cvsroot/pgsql/src/backend/access/nbtree/README,v 1.3 2000/07/21 22:14:09 tgl Exp $
$Header: /cvsroot/pgsql/src/backend/access/nbtree/README,v 1.4 2000/07/25 05:26:40 tgl Exp $
This directory contains a correct implementation of Lehman and Yao's
high-concurrency B-tree management algorithm (P. Lehman and S. Yao,
@ -119,6 +119,17 @@ In addition, the following things are handy to know:
exists only to support VACUUM and allow it to delete items while
it's scanning the index.
+ "ScanKey" data structures are used in two fundamentally different ways
in this code. Searches for the initial position for a scan, as well as
insertions, use scankeys in which the comparison function is a 3-way
comparator (<0, =0, >0 result). These scankeys are built within the
btree code (eg, by _bt_mkscankey()) and used by _bt_compare(). Once we
are positioned, sequential examination of tuples in a scan is done by
_bt_checkkeys() using scankeys in which the comparison functions return
booleans --- for example, int4lt might be used. These scankeys are the
ones originally passed in from outside the btree code. Same
representation, but different comparison functions!
Notes about data representation:
+ The right-sibling link required by L&Y is kept in the page "opaque