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This adds a new variant of generated columns that are computed on read
(like a view, unlike the existing stored generated columns, which are
computed on write, like a materialized view).
The syntax for the column definition is
... GENERATED ALWAYS AS (...) VIRTUAL
and VIRTUAL is also optional. VIRTUAL is the default rather than
STORED to match various other SQL products. (The SQL standard makes
no specification about this, but it also doesn't know about VIRTUAL or
STORED.) (Also, virtual views are the default, rather than
materialized views.)
Virtual generated columns are stored in tuples as null values. (A
very early version of this patch had the ambition to not store them at
all. But so much stuff breaks or gets confused if you have tuples
where a column in the middle is completely missing. This is a
compromise, and it still saves space over being forced to use stored
generated columns. If we ever find a way to improve this, a bit of
pg_upgrade cleverness could allow for upgrades to a newer scheme.)
The capabilities and restrictions of virtual generated columns are
mostly the same as for stored generated columns. In some cases, this
patch keeps virtual generated columns more restricted than they might
technically need to be, to keep the two kinds consistent. Some of
that could maybe be relaxed later after separate careful
considerations.
Some functionality that is currently not supported, but could possibly
be added as incremental features, some easier than others:
- index on or using a virtual column
- hence also no unique constraints on virtual columns
- extended statistics on virtual columns
- foreign-key constraints on virtual columns
- not-null constraints on virtual columns (check constraints are supported)
- ALTER TABLE / DROP EXPRESSION
- virtual column cannot have domain type
- virtual columns are not supported in logical replication
The tests in generated_virtual.sql have been copied over from
generated_stored.sql with the keyword replaced. This way we can make
sure the behavior is mostly aligned, and the differences can be
visible. Some tests for currently not supported features are
currently commented out.
Reviewed-by: Jian He <jian.universality@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Dean Rasheed <dean.a.rasheed@gmail.com>
Tested-by: Shlok Kyal <shlok.kyal.oss@gmail.com>
Discussion: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/a368248e-69e4-40be-9c07-6c3b5880b0a6@eisentraut.org
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| authentication | ||
| examples | ||
| icu | ||
| isolation | ||
| kerberos | ||
| ldap | ||
| locale | ||
| mb | ||
| modules | ||
| perl | ||
| postmaster | ||
| recovery | ||
| regress | ||
| ssl | ||
| subscription | ||
| Makefile | ||
| meson.build | ||
| README | ||
PostgreSQL tests ================ This directory contains a variety of test infrastructure as well as some of the tests in PostgreSQL. Not all tests are here -- in particular, there are more in individual contrib/ modules and in src/bin. Not all these tests get run by "make check". Check src/test/Makefile to see which tests get run automatically. authentication/ Tests for authentication (but see also below) examples/ Demonstration programs for libpq that double as regression tests via "make check" isolation/ Tests for concurrent behavior at the SQL level kerberos/ Tests for Kerberos/GSSAPI authentication and encryption ldap/ Tests for LDAP-based authentication locale/ Sanity checks for locale data, encodings, etc mb/ Tests for multibyte encoding (UTF-8) support modules/ Extensions used only or mainly for test purposes, generally not suitable for installing in production databases perl/ Infrastructure for Perl-based TAP tests recovery/ Test suite for recovery and replication regress/ PostgreSQL's main regression test suite, pg_regress ssl/ Tests to exercise and verify SSL certificate handling subscription/ Tests for logical replication