A Gather executor node runs any number of copies of a plan in an equal
number of workers and merges all of the results into a single tuple
stream. It can also run the plan itself, if the workers are
unavailable or haven't started up yet. It is intended to work with
the Partial Seq Scan node which will be added in future commits.
It could also be used to implement parallel query of a different sort
by itself, without help from Partial Seq Scan, if the single_copy mode
is used. In that mode, a worker executes the plan, and the parallel
leader does not, merely collecting the worker's results. So, a Gather
node could be inserted into a plan to split the execution of that plan
across two processes. Nested Gather nodes aren't currently supported,
but we might want to add support for that in the future.
There's nothing in the planner to actually generate Gather nodes yet,
so it's not quite time to break out the champagne. But we're getting
close.
Amit Kapila. Some designs suggestions were provided by me, and I also
reviewed the patch. Single-copy mode, documentation, and other minor
changes also by me.
This code provides infrastructure for a parallel leader to start up
parallel workers to execute subtrees of the plan tree being executed
in the master. User-supplied parameters from ParamListInfo are passed
down, but PARAM_EXEC parameters are not. Various other constructs,
such as initplans, subplans, and CTEs, are also not currently shared.
Nevertheless, there's enough here to support a basic implementation of
parallel query, and we can lift some of the current restrictions as
needed.
Amit Kapila and Robert Haas
