| From: | Peter Geoghegan <pg(at)heroku(dot)com> |
|---|---|
| To: | Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> |
| Cc: | Amit Kapila <amit(dot)kapila16(at)gmail(dot)com>, Pg Hackers <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org> |
| Subject: | Re: Stating the significance of Lehman & Yao in the nbtree README |
| Date: | 2014-07-23 05:21:51 |
| Message-ID: | CAM3SWZRvRQajE=B=2N-kboY67pRatD4BFY-+=+aoSpr5S2qxKw@mail.gmail.com |
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| Lists: | pgsql-hackers |
On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 5:39 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> IIRC, the README was written on the assumption that you'd already read
> L&Y. If this patch is mostly about not assuming that, why not?
L&Y made the same mistake that the authors of most influential papers
make - they never get around to telling the reader why they should
bother to read it. The paper is over 30 years old, and we now know
that it's very influential, and the reasons why. I think that both the
nbtree README and L&Y would be a lot more approachable with a high
level introduction (arguably L&Y attempt this, but the way they go
about it seems impenetrable, mostly consisting of esoteric references
to other papers). Surely making that code more approachable is a
worthy goal.
--
Peter Geoghegan
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