Re: [HACKERS] Custom compression methods

Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net>
Cc: Justin Pryzby <pryzby@telsasoft.com>, Dilip Kumar <dilipbalaut@gmail.com>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>, Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>, Tomas Vondra <tomas.vondra@2ndquadrant.com>, Alexander Korotkov <a.korotkov@postgrespro.ru>, David Steele <david@pgmasters.net>, Ildus Kurbangaliev <i.kurbangaliev@gmail.com>, Dmitry Dolgov <9erthalion6@gmail.com>, pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org
Date: 2021-03-24T15:41:58Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> writes:
> On 3/20/21 3:03 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
>> I fixed up some issues in 0008/0009 (mostly cosmetic, except that
>> you forgot a server version check in dumpToastCompression) and
>> pushed that, so we can see if it makes crake happy.

> It's still produced a significant amount more difference between the
> dumps. For now I've increased the fuzz factor a bit like this:
> -   if (   ($oversion ne $this_branch && $difflines < 2000)
> +   if (   ($oversion ne $this_branch && $difflines < 2700)
> I'll try to come up with something better. Maybe just ignore lines like
>     SET default_toast_compression = 'pglz';
> when taking the diff.

I see that some other buildfarm animals besides your own critters
are still failing the xversion tests, presumably because they lack
this hack :-(.

On reflection, though, I wonder if we've made pg_dump do the right
thing anyway.  There is a strong case to be made for the idea that
when dumping from a pre-14 server, it should emit
	SET default_toast_compression = 'pglz';
rather than omitting any mention of the variable, which is what
I made it do in aa25d1089.  If we changed that, I think all these
diffs would go away.  Am I right in thinking that what's being
compared here is new pg_dump's dump from old server versus new
pg_dump's dump from new server?

The "strong case" goes like this: initdb a v14 cluster, change
default_toast_compression to lz4 in its postgresql.conf, then
try to pg_upgrade from an old server.  If the dump script doesn't
set default_toast_compression = 'pglz' then the upgrade will
do the wrong thing because all the tables will be recreated with
a different behavior than they had before.  IIUC, this wouldn't
result in broken data, but it still seems to me to be undesirable.
dump/restore ought to do its best to preserve the old DB state,
unless you explicitly tell it --no-toast-compression or the like.

			regards, tom lane



Commits

  1. docs: Update TOAST storage docs for configurable compression.

  2. Further tweaking of pg_dump's handling of default_toast_compression.

  3. Fix interaction of TOAST compression with expression indexes.

  4. Tidy up more loose ends related to configurable TOAST compression.

  5. Short-circuit slice requests that are for more than the object's size.

  6. Mostly-cosmetic adjustments of TOAST-related macros.

  7. Remove useless configure probe for <lz4/lz4.h>.

  8. Error on invalid TOAST compression in CREATE or ALTER TABLE.

  9. docs: Fix omissions related to configurable TOAST compression.

  10. More code cleanup for configurable TOAST compression.

  11. Bring configure support for LZ4 up to snuff.

  12. Make compression.sql regression test independent of default.

  13. Use valid compression method in brin_form_tuple

  14. Fix up pg_dump's handling of per-attribute compression options.

  15. Allow configurable LZ4 TOAST compression.

  16. Fix inconsistencies in the code

  17. Mostly-cosmetic improvements in memory chunk header alignment coding.

  18. Allow numeric to use a more compact, 2-byte header in many cases.