Re:Features I'd Like in PostgreSQL
by jiggawatts on Saturday January 28, 2023 @05:35PM
(#34562735)
This is vaguely how the Microsoft "Jet" database engines work. Microsoft Exchange uses this low-level query authoring technique to achieve its scalability and performance goals. This generally makes its performance consistent and predictable.
There were some attempts back in the early 2000s to move Exchange over to use the SQL Server RDBMS engine, and they added a bunch of features to enable this kind of low-level control. Not just join hints: you could force specific query plans by specifying the plan XML document for that query. See: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/queries/hints-tr...
This wasn't good enough however, and Exchange still uses the Jet database.
Something that might be interesting is an RDBMS "as a library", where instead of poking it with ASCII text queries, you get a full programming API surface where you can do exactly the type of thing you propose: perform arbitrary walks through data structures, develop custom indexes, or whatever.
There were some attempts back in the early 2000s to move Exchange over to use the SQL Server RDBMS engine, and they added a bunch of features to enable this kind of low-level control. Not just join hints: you could force specific query plans by specifying the plan XML document for that query. See: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/queries/hints-tr...
This wasn't good enough however, and Exchange still uses the Jet database.
Something that might be interesting is an RDBMS "as a library", where instead of poking it with ASCII text queries, you get a full programming API surface where you can do exactly the type of thing you propose: perform arbitrary walks through data structures, develop custom indexes, or whatever.