-<!-- $PostgreSQL: pgsql/doc/src/sgml/filelist.sgml,v 1.44 2005/09/12 22:11:38 neilc Exp $ -->
+<!-- $PostgreSQL: pgsql/doc/src/sgml/filelist.sgml,v 1.45 2006/09/04 20:10:53 momjian Exp $ -->
<!entity history SYSTEM "history.sgml">
<!entity info SYSTEM "info.sgml">
<!entity catalogs SYSTEM "catalogs.sgml">
<!entity geqo SYSTEM "geqo.sgml">
<!entity gist SYSTEM "gist.sgml">
+<!entity gin SYSTEM "gin.sgml">
<!entity planstats SYSTEM "planstats.sgml">
<!entity indexam SYSTEM "indexam.sgml">
<!entity nls SYSTEM "nls.sgml">
--- /dev/null
+<!-- $PostgreSQL: pgsql/doc/src/sgml/gin.sgml,v 1.1 2006/09/04 20:10:53 momjian Exp $ -->
+
+<chapter id="GIN">
+<title>GIN Indexes</title>
+
+ <indexterm>
+ <primary>index</primary>
+ <secondary>GIN</secondary>
+ </indexterm>
+
+<sect1 id="gin-intro">
+ <title>Introduction</title>
+
+ <para>
+ <acronym>GIN</acronym> stands for Generalized Inverted Index. It is
+ an index structure storing a set of (key, posting list) pairs, where
+ 'posting list' is a set of documents in which the key occurs.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ It is generalized in the sense that a <acronym>GIN</acronym> index
+ does not need to be aware of the operation that it accelerates.
+ Instead, it uses custom strategies defined for particular data types.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ One advantage of <acronym>GIN</acronym> is that it allows the development
+ of custom data types with the appropriate access methods, by
+ an expert in the domain of the data type, rather than a database expert.
+ This is much the same advantage as using <acronym>GiST</acronym>.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ The <acronym>GIN</acronym>
+ implementation in <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> is primarily
+ maintained by Teodor Sigaev and Oleg Bartunov, and there is more
+ information on their
+ <ulink url="http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/oddmuse/index.cgi/Gin">website</ulink>.
+ </para>
+
+</sect1>
+
+<sect1 id="gin-extensibility">
+ <title>Extensibility</title>
+
+ <para>
+ The <acronym>GIN</acronym> interface has a high level of abstraction,
+ requiring the access method implementer to only implement the semantics of
+ the data type being accessed. The <acronym>GIN</acronym> layer itself
+ takes care of concurrency, logging and searching the tree structure.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ All it takes to get a <acronym>GIN</acronym> access method working
+ is to implement four user-defined methods, which define the behavior of
+ keys in the tree. In short, <acronym>GIN</acronym> combines extensibility
+ along with generality, code reuse, and a clean interface.
+ </para>
+
+</sect1>
+
+<sect1 id="gin-implementation">
+ <title>Implementation</title>
+
+ <para>
+ There are four methods that an index operator class for
+ <acronym>GIN</acronym> must provide:
+ </para>
+
+ <variablelist>
+ <varlistentry>
+ <term>compare</term>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ </varlistentry>
+
+ <varlistentry>
+ <term>extract value</term>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ </varlistentry>
+
+ <varlistentry>
+ <term>extract query</term>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ </varlistentry>
+
+ <varlistentry>
+ <term>consistent</term>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ </varlistentry>
+
+ </variablelist>
+
+</sect1>
+
+<sect1 id="gin-examples">
+ <title>Examples</title>
+
+ <para>
+ The <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> source distribution includes
+ <acronym>GIN</acronym> classes for one-dimensional arrays of all internal
+ types. The following
+ <filename>contrib</> modules also contain <acronym>GIN</acronym>
+ operator classes:
+ </para>
+
+ <variablelist>
+ <varlistentry>
+ <term>intarray</term>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>Enhanced support for int4[]</para>
+ </listitem>
+ </varlistentry>
+
+ <varlistentry>
+ <term>tsearch2</term>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>Support for inverted text indexing. This is much faster for very
+ large, mostly-static sets of documents.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ </varlistentry>
+
+</chapter>
-<!-- $PostgreSQL: pgsql/doc/src/sgml/xindex.sgml,v 1.43 2006/03/10 19:10:49 momjian Exp $ -->
+<!-- $PostgreSQL: pgsql/doc/src/sgml/xindex.sgml,v 1.44 2006/09/04 20:10:53 momjian Exp $ -->
<sect1 id="xindex">
<title>Interfacing Extensions To Indexes</title>
</tgroup>
</table>
+ <para>
+ GIN indexes require four support functions,
+ shown in <xref linkend="xindex-gin-support-table">.
+ </para>
+
+ <table tocentry="1" id="xindex-gin-support-table">
+ <title>GIN Support Functions</title>
+ <tgroup cols="2">
+ <thead>
+ <row>
+ <entry>Function</entry>
+ <entry>Support Number</entry>
+ </row>
+ </thead>
+ <tbody>
+ <row>
+ <entry>compare</entry>
+ <entry>1</entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>extract value</entry>
+ <entry>2</entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>extract query</entry>
+ <entry>3</entry>
+ </row>
+ <row>
+ <entry>consistent</entry>
+ <entry>4</entry>
+ </row>
+ </tbody>
+ </tgroup>
+ </table>
+
<para>
Unlike strategy operators, support functions return whichever data
type the particular index method expects; for example in the case