this one could be useful for people experiencing out-of-memory crashes while
executing queries which retrieve or use a very large number of tuples.
The problem happens when storage is allocated for functions results used in
a large query, for example:
select upper(name) from big_table;
select big_table.array[1] from big_table;
select count(upper(name)) from big_table;
This patch is a dirty hack that fixes the out-of-memory problem for the most
common cases, like the above ones. It is not the final solution for the
problem but it can work for some people, so I'm posting it.
The patch should be safe because all changes are under #ifdef. Furthermore
the feature can be enabled or disabled at runtime by the `free_tuple_memory'
options in the pg_options file. The option is disabled by default and must
be explicitly enabled at runtime to have any effect.
To enable the patch add the follwing line to Makefile.custom:
CUSTOM_COPT += -DFREE_TUPLE_MEMORY
To enable the option at runtime add the following line to pg_option:
free_tuple_memory=1
Massimo
no longer returns buffer pointer, can be gotten from scan;
descriptor; bootstrap can create multi-key indexes;
pg_procname index now is multi-key index; oidint2, oidint4, oidname
are gone (must be removed from regression tests); use System Cache
rather than sequential scan in many places; heap_modifytuple no
longer takes buffer parameter; remove unused buffer parameter in
a few other functions; oid8 is not index-able; remove some use of
single-character variable names; cleanup Buffer variables usage
and scan descriptor looping; cleaned up allocation and freeing of
tuples; 18k lines of diff;
select from a table with attrs (a int, b char(20))
crashed in bpcharout() (palloc of -1 bytes). But a table
with attrs (a int, b varchar(20)) worked.
From: Jan Wieck <jwieck@debis.com>
