about best practice for including the module creation scripts: to wit
that you should suppress NOTICE messages. This avoids creating
regression failures by adding or removing comment lines in the module
scripts.
and RelationNameGetTupleDesc() as deprecated; remove uses of the
latter in the contrib library. Along the way, clean up crosstab()
code and documentation a little.
This was the last piece of code that took it upon itself to reset the
random number sequence --- now we only have srandom() in postmaster start,
backend start, and explicit setseed() operations.
>>Sounds like all that's needed for your case. But to be complete, in
>>addition to changing tablefunc.c we'd have to:
>>1) come up with a new function call signature that makes sense and does
>>not cause backward compatibility problems for other people
>>2) make needed changes to tablefunc.sql.in
>>3) adjust the README.tablefunc appropriately
>>4) adjust the regression test for new functionality
>>5) be sure we don't break any of the old cases
>>
>>If you want to submit a complete patch, it would be gratefully accepted
>>-- for review at least ;-)
>
> Here's the patch, at least for steps 1-3
Nabil Sayegh
Joe Conway
version of crosstab. This fixes a major deficiency in real-world use of
the original version. Easiest to undestand with an illustration:
Data:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
select * from cth;
id | rowid | rowdt | attribute | val
----+-------+---------------------+----------------+---------------
1 | test1 | 2003-03-01 00:00:00 | temperature | 42
2 | test1 | 2003-03-01 00:00:00 | test_result | PASS
3 | test1 | 2003-03-01 00:00:00 | volts | 2.6987
4 | test2 | 2003-03-02 00:00:00 | temperature | 53
5 | test2 | 2003-03-02 00:00:00 | test_result | FAIL
6 | test2 | 2003-03-02 00:00:00 | test_startdate | 01 March 2003
7 | test2 | 2003-03-02 00:00:00 | volts | 3.1234
(7 rows)
Original crosstab:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
SELECT * FROM crosstab(
'SELECT rowid, attribute, val FROM cth ORDER BY 1,2',4)
AS c(rowid text, temperature text, test_result text, test_startdate
text, volts text);
rowid | temperature | test_result | test_startdate | volts
-------+-------------+-------------+----------------+--------
test1 | 42 | PASS | 2.6987 |
test2 | 53 | FAIL | 01 March 2003 | 3.1234
(2 rows)
Hashed crosstab:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
SELECT * FROM crosstab(
'SELECT rowid, attribute, val FROM cth ORDER BY 1',
'SELECT DISTINCT attribute FROM cth ORDER BY 1')
AS c(rowid text, temperature int4, test_result text, test_startdate
timestamp, volts float8);
rowid | temperature | test_result | test_startdate | volts
-------+-------------+-------------+---------------------+--------
test1 | 42 | PASS | | 2.6987
test2 | 53 | FAIL | 2003-03-01 00:00:00 | 3.1234
(2 rows)
Notice that the original crosstab slides data over to the left in the
result tuple when it encounters missing data. In order to work around
this you have to be make your source sql do all sorts of contortions
(cartesian join of distinct rowid with distinct attribute; left join
that back to the real source data). The new version avoids this by
building a hash table using a second distinct attribute query.
The new version also allows for "extra" columns (see the README) and
allows the result columns to be coerced into differing datatypes if they
are suitable (as shown above).
In testing a "real-world" data set (69 distinct rowid's, 27 distinct
categories/attributes, multiple missing data points) I saw about a
5-fold improvement in execution time (from about 2200 ms old, to 440 ms
new).
I left the original version intact because: 1) BC, 2) it is probably
slightly faster if you know that you have no missing attributes.
README and regression test adjustments included. If there are no
objections, please apply.
Joe Conway
Create objects in public schema.
Make spacing/capitalization consistent.
Remove transaction block use for object creation.
Remove unneeded function GRANTs.
contrib/tablefunc. Specifically it replaces the use of VIEWs (for needed
composite type creation) with use of CREATE TYPE. It also performs GRANT
EXECUTE ON FUNCTION foo() TO PUBLIC for all of the created functions. There
was also a cosmetic change to two regression files.
Joe Conway
