With this patch, portals, SQL functions, and SPI all agree that there
should be only a CommandCounterIncrement between the queries that are
generated from a single SQL command by rule expansion. Fetching a whole
new snapshot now happens only between original queries. This is equivalent
to the existing behavior of EXPLAIN ANALYZE, and it was judged to be the
best choice since it eliminates one source of concurrency hazards for
rules. The patch should also make things marginally faster by reducing the
number of snapshot push/pop operations.
The patch removes pg_parse_and_rewrite(), which is no longer used anywhere.
There was considerable discussion about more aggressive refactoring of the
query-processing functions exported by postgres.c, but for the moment
nothing more has been done there.
I also took the opportunity to refactor snapmgr.c's API slightly: the
former PushUpdatedSnapshot() has been split into two functions.
Marko Tiikkaja, reviewed by Steve Singer and Tom Lane
Until now, our Serializable mode has in fact been what's called Snapshot
Isolation, which allows some anomalies that could not occur in any
serialized ordering of the transactions. This patch fixes that using a
method called Serializable Snapshot Isolation, based on research papers by
Michael J. Cahill (see README-SSI for full references). In Serializable
Snapshot Isolation, transactions run like they do in Snapshot Isolation,
but a predicate lock manager observes the reads and writes performed and
aborts transactions if it detects that an anomaly might occur. This method
produces some false positives, ie. it sometimes aborts transactions even
though there is no anomaly.
To track reads we implement predicate locking, see storage/lmgr/predicate.c.
Whenever a tuple is read, a predicate lock is acquired on the tuple. Shared
memory is finite, so when a transaction takes many tuple-level locks on a
page, the locks are promoted to a single page-level lock, and further to a
single relation level lock if necessary. To lock key values with no matching
tuple, a sequential scan always takes a relation-level lock, and an index
scan acquires a page-level lock that covers the search key, whether or not
there are any matching keys at the moment.
A predicate lock doesn't conflict with any regular locks or with another
predicate locks in the normal sense. They're only used by the predicate lock
manager to detect the danger of anomalies. Only serializable transactions
participate in predicate locking, so there should be no extra overhead for
for other transactions.
Predicate locks can't be released at commit, but must be remembered until
all the transactions that overlapped with it have completed. That means that
we need to remember an unbounded amount of predicate locks, so we apply a
lossy but conservative method of tracking locks for committed transactions.
If we run short of shared memory, we overflow to a new "pg_serial" SLRU
pool.
We don't currently allow Serializable transactions in Hot Standby mode.
That would be hard, because even read-only transactions can cause anomalies
that wouldn't otherwise occur.
Serializable isolation mode now means the new fully serializable level.
Repeatable Read gives you the old Snapshot Isolation level that we have
always had.
Kevin Grittner and Dan Ports, reviewed by Jeff Davis, Heikki Linnakangas and
Anssi Kääriäinen
transaction snapshots, i.e. a snapshot registered at the beginning of
a transaction. Change variable naming and comments to reflect this reality
in preparation for a future, truly serializable mode, e.g.
Serializable Snapshot Isolation (SSI).
For the moment transaction snapshots are still used to implement
SERIALIZABLE, but hopefully not for too much longer. Patch by Kevin
Grittner and Dan Ports with review and some minor wording changes by me.
Enabled by recovery_connections = on (default) and forcing archive recovery using a recovery.conf. Recovery processing now emulates the original transactions as they are replayed, providing full locking and MVCC behaviour for read only queries. Recovery must enter consistent state before connections are allowed, so there is a delay, typically short, before connections succeed. Replay of recovering transactions can conflict and in some cases deadlock with queries during recovery; these result in query cancellation after max_standby_delay seconds have expired. Infrastructure changes have minor effects on normal running, though introduce four new types of WAL record.
New test mode "make standbycheck" allows regression tests of static command behaviour on a standby server while in recovery. Typical and extreme dynamic behaviours have been checked via code inspection and manual testing. Few port specific behaviours have been utilised, though primary testing has been on Linux only so far.
This commit is the basic patch. Additional changes will follow in this release to enhance some aspects of behaviour, notably improved handling of conflicts, deadlock detection and query cancellation. Changes to VACUUM FULL are also required.
Simon Riggs, with significant and lengthy review by Heikki Linnakangas, including streamlined redesign of snapshot creation and two-phase commit.
Important contributions from Florian Pflug, Mark Kirkwood, Merlin Moncure, Greg Stark, Gianni Ciolli, Gabriele Bartolini, Hannu Krosing, Robert Haas, Tatsuo Ishii, Hiroyuki Yamada plus support and feedback from many other community members.
Partially revert the previous patch I installed and replace it with a more
general fix: any time a snapshot is pushed as Active, we need to ensure that it
will not be modified in the future. This means that if the same snapshot is
used as CurrentSnapshot, it needs to be copied separately. This affects
serializable transactions only, because CurrentSnapshot has already been copied
by RegisterSnapshot and so PushActiveSnapshot does not think it needs another
copy. However, CommandCounterIncrement would modify CurrentSnapshot, whereas
ActiveSnapshots must not have their command counters incremented.
I say "partially" because the regression test I added for the previous bug
has been kept.
(This restores 8.3 behavior, because before snapmgr.c existed, any snapshot set
as Active was copied.)
Per bug report from Stuart Bishop in
6bc73d4c0910042358k3d1adff3qa36f8df75198ecea@mail.gmail.com
The old coding was using a regular snapshot, referenced elsewhere, that was
subject to having its command counter updated. Fix by creating a private copy
of the snapshot exclusively for the cursor.
Backpatch to 8.4, which is when the bug was introduced during the snapshot
management rewrite.
non-writable large objects need to have their snapshots registered on the
transaction resowner, not the current portal's, because it must persist until
the large object is closed (which the portal does not). Also, ensure that the
serializable snapshot is recorded by the transaction resource owner too, even
when a subtransaction has changed the current resource owner before
serializable is taken.
Per bug reports from Pavan Deolasee.
by hand. As an added bonus, the new code is smaller and more understandable,
and the ugly loops are gone.
This had been discussed all along but never implemented. It became clear that
it really needed to be fixed after a bug report by Pavan Deolasee.
GetOldestXmin() instead of RecentGlobalXmin; this is safer because we do not
depend on the latter being correctly set elsewhere, and while it is more
expensive, this code path is not performance-critical. This is a real
risk for autovacuum, because it can execute whole cycles without doing
a single vacuum, which would mean that RecentGlobalXmin would stay at its
initialization value, FirstNormalTransactionId, causing a bogus value to be
inserted in pg_database. This bug could explain some recent reports of
failure to truncate pg_clog.
At the same time, change the initialization of RecentGlobalXmin to
InvalidTransactionId, and ensure that it's set to something else whenever
it's going to be used. Using it as FirstNormalTransactionId in HOT page
pruning could incur in data loss. InitPostgres takes care of setting it
to a valid value, but the extra checks are there to prevent "special"
backends from behaving in unusual ways.
Per Tom Lane's detailed problem dissection in 29544.1221061979@sss.pgh.pa.us
CopySnapshot, per Neil Conway. Also add a comment about the assumption in
GetSnapshotData that the argument is statically allocated.
Also, fix some more typos in comments in snapmgr.c.
There are two ways to track a snapshot: there's the "registered" list, which
is used for arbitrary long-lived snapshots; and there's the "active stack",
which is used for the snapshot that is considered "active" at any time.
This also allows users of snapshots to stop worrying about snapshot memory
allocation and freeing, and about using PG_TRY blocks around ActiveSnapshot
assignment. This is all done automatically now.
As a consequence, this allows us to reset MyProc->xmin when there are no
more snapshots registered in the current backend, reducing the impact that
long-running transactions have on VACUUM.
