plpgsql has always executed the query given in a RETURN QUERY command
by opening it as a cursor and then fetching a few rows at a time,
which it turns around and dumps into the function's result tuplestore.
The point of this was to keep from blowing out memory with an oversized
SPITupleTable result (note that while a tuplestore can spill tuples
to disk, SPITupleTable cannot). However, it's rather inefficient, both
because of extra data copying and because of executor entry/exit
overhead. In recent versions, a new performance problem has emerged:
use of a cursor prevents use of a parallel plan for the executed query.
We can improve matters by skipping use of a cursor and having the
executor push result tuples directly into the function's result
tuplestore. However, a moderate amount of new infrastructure is needed
to make that idea work:
* We can use the existing tstoreReceiver.c DestReceiver code to funnel
executor output to the tuplestore, but it has to be extended to support
plpgsql's requirement for possibly applying a tuple conversion map.
* SPI needs to be extended to allow use of a caller-supplied
DestReceiver instead of its usual receiver that puts tuples into
a SPITupleTable. Two new API calls are needed to handle both the
RETURN QUERY and RETURN QUERY EXECUTE cases.
I also felt that I didn't want these new API calls to use the legacy
method of specifying query parameter values with "char" null flags
(the old ' '/'n' convention); rather they should accept ParamListInfo
objects containing the parameter type and value info. This required
a bit of additional new infrastructure since we didn't yet have any
parse analysis callback that would interpret $N parameter symbols
according to type data supplied in a ParamListInfo. There seems to be
no harm in letting makeParamList install that callback by default,
rather than leaving a new ParamListInfo's parserSetup hook as NULL.
(Indeed, as of HEAD, I couldn't find anyplace that was using the
parserSetup field at all; plpgsql was using parserSetupArg for its
own purposes, but parserSetup seemed to be write-only.)
We can actually get plpgsql out of the business of using legacy null
flags altogether, and using ParamListInfo instead of its ad-hoc
PreparedParamsData structure; but this requires inventing one more
SPI API call that can replace SPI_cursor_open_with_args. That seems
worth doing, though.
SPI_execute_with_args and SPI_cursor_open_with_args are now unused
anywhere in the core PG distribution. Perhaps someday we could
deprecate/remove them. But cleaning up the crufty bits of the SPI
API is a task for a different patch.
Per bug #16040 from Jeremy Smith. This is unfortunately too invasive to
consider back-patching. Patch by me; thanks to Hamid Akhtar for review.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/16040-eaacad11fecfb198@postgresql.org
Change pg_bsd_indent to follow upstream rules for placement of comments
to the right of code, and remove pgindent hack that caused comments
following #endif to not obey the general rule.
Commit e3860ffa4d wasn't actually using
the published version of pg_bsd_indent, but a hacked-up version that
tried to minimize the amount of movement of comments to the right of
code. The situation of interest is where such a comment has to be
moved to the right of its default placement at column 33 because there's
code there. BSD indent has always moved right in units of tab stops
in such cases --- but in the previous incarnation, indent was working
in 8-space tab stops, while now it knows we use 4-space tabs. So the
net result is that in about half the cases, such comments are placed
one tab stop left of before. This is better all around: it leaves
more room on the line for comment text, and it means that in such
cases the comment uniformly starts at the next 4-space tab stop after
the code, rather than sometimes one and sometimes two tabs after.
Also, ensure that comments following #endif are indented the same
as comments following other preprocessor commands such as #else.
That inconsistency turns out to have been self-inflicted damage
from a poorly-thought-through post-indent "fixup" in pgindent.
This patch is much less interesting than the first round of indent
changes, but also bulkier, so I thought it best to separate the effects.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/E1dAmxK-0006EE-1r@gemulon.postgresql.org
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/30527.1495162840@sss.pgh.pa.us
toasted values, since those could get dropped once the cursor's transaction
is over. Per bug #4553 from Andrew Gierth.
Back-patch as far as 8.1. The bug actually exists back to 7.4 when holdable
cursors were introduced, but this patch won't work before 8.1 without
significant adjustments. Given the lack of field complaints, it doesn't seem
worth the work (and risk of introducing new bugs) to try to make a patch for
the older branches.
that a Portal is a useful and sufficient additional argument for
CreateDestReceiver --- it just isn't, in most cases. Instead formalize
the approach of passing any needed parameters to the receiver separately.
One unexpected benefit of this change is that we can declare typedef Portal
in a less surprising location.
This patch is just code rearrangement and doesn't change any functionality.
I'll tackle the HOLD-cursor-vs-toast problem in a follow-on patch.
Also performed an initial run through of upgrading our Copyright date to
extend to 2005 ... first run here was very simple ... change everything
where: grep 1996-2004 && the word 'Copyright' ... scanned through the
generated list with 'less' first, and after, to make sure that I only
picked up the right entries ...
DestReceiver pointers instead of just CommandDest values. The DestReceiver
is made at the point where the destination is selected, rather than
deep inside the executor. This cleans up the original kluge implementation
of tstoreReceiver.c, and makes it easy to support retrieving results
from utility statements inside portals. Thus, you can now do fun things
like Bind and Execute a FETCH or EXPLAIN command, and it'll all work
as expected (e.g., you can Describe the portal, or use Execute's count
parameter to suspend the output partway through). Implementation involves
stuffing the utility command's output into a Tuplestore, which would be
kind of annoying for huge output sets, but should be quite acceptable
for typical uses of utility commands.
