Thread

Re: Optimize LISTEN/NOTIFY

Joel Jacobson <joel@compiler.org> — 2025-11-12T20:37:51Z

On Wed, Nov 12, 2025, at 17:57, Arseniy Mukhin wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 11, 2025 at 7:35 PM Joel Jacobson <joel@compiler.org> wrote:
>> I'm therefore attaching v24 again, but renamed to v26.
>
> Thank you for the new version!

Thanks for reviewing!

> I read direct advancement part of v26, one point about it:
>
> The comment in SignalBackend says:
>
>            * Listening backends that are not advancing and are stationary at
>            * a position somewhere in the range we just wrote, can safely be
>            * direct advanced to the new queue head, since we know that they
>            * are not interested in our messages.
>            */
>
> IIUC it's impossible for the listener to stop somewhere in between
> queueHeadBeforeWrite and queueHeadAfterWrite. If the listener has
> managed to read the first notification from the notifier, it means the
> notifier transaction is complete and the listener should stop only
> after reading all notifications (so we should always see pos =
> queueHeadAfterWrite or further).

Here is what I think can happen:

If the notifications written by the notifier fills the current page,
it updates QUEUE_HEAD, and if a listening backend then
enters asyncQueueReadAllNotifications at this time,
it will set its local `head` variable to the current QUEUE_HEAD,
and when the notifier continues filling the next page,
it will again update QUEUE_HEAD, and PreCommit_Notify
will overwrite queueHeadAfterWrite with the QUEUE_HEAD.

Sequence of events:

1. In the notifier, PreCommit_Notify calls asyncQueueAddEntries,
which updates QUEUE_HEAD when the page is full,
(and sets queueHeadAfterWrite to this value).

2. At this time, a listener wakes up and asyncQueueAddEntries
reads the current QUEUE_HEAD value and stores it
in its local `head` variable, and starts reading up to this pos.

3. In the notifier, PreCommit_Notify calls asyncQueueAddEntries
the second time, which updates QUEUE_HEAD,
and sets queueHeadAfterWrite to the final value
before returning.

For this reason, I think the listener could actually stop
in between queueHeadBeforeWrite and queueHeadAfterWrite,
since it's local `head` variable could get the intermediary
QUEUE_HEAD value, when a page is full.

/Joel