Re: ALTER TABLE .. DETACH PARTITION CONCURRENTLY

Hi Justin,

Thanks for all the comments. I'll incorporate everything and submit an
updated version later.

On 2020-Nov-30, Justin Pryzby wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 03, 2020 at 08:56:06PM -0300, Alvaro Herrera wrote:

> > +++ b/src/bin/psql/describe.c
> > -			printfPQExpBuffer(&tmpbuf, _("Partition of: %s %s"), parent_name,
> > -							  partdef);
> > +			printfPQExpBuffer(&tmpbuf, _("Partition of: %s %s%s"), parent_name,
> > +							  partdef,
> > +							  strcmp(detached, "t") == 0 ? " DETACHED" : "");
> 
> The attname "detached" is a stretch of what's intuitive (it's more like
> "detachING" or half-detached).  But I think psql should for sure show something
> more obvious to users.  Esp. seeing as psql output isn't documented.  Let's
> figure out what to show to users and then maybe rename the column that, too.

OK.  I agree that "being detached" is the state we want users to see, or
maybe "detach pending", or "unfinisheddetach" (ugh).  I'm not sure that
pg_inherits.inhbeingdetached" is a great column name.  Opinions welcome.

> > +PG_KEYWORD("finalize", FINALIZE, UNRESERVED_KEYWORD, BARE_LABEL)
> 
> Instead of finalize .. deferred ?  Or ??

Well, I'm thinking that this has to be a verb in the imperative mood.
The user is commanding the server to "finalize this detach operation".
I'm not sure that DEFERRED fits that grammatical role.  If there are
other ideas, let's discuss them.

ALTER TABLE tst DETACH PARTITION tst_1 FINALIZE  <-- decent
ALTER TABLE tst DETACH PARTITION tst_1 COMPLETE  <-- I don't like it
ALTER TABLE tst DETACH PARTITION tst_1 DEFERRED  <-- grammatically faulty?

> ATExecDetachPartition:
> Doesn't this need to lock the table before testing for default partition ?

Correct, it does.

> I ended up with apparently broken constraint when running multiple loops around
> a concurrent detach / attach:
> 
> while psql -h /tmp postgres -c "ALTER TABLE p ATTACH PARTITION p1 FOR VALUES FROM (1)TO(2)" -c "ALTER TABLE p DETACH PARTITION p1 CONCURRENTLY"; do :; done&
> while psql -h /tmp postgres -c "ALTER TABLE p ATTACH PARTITION p1 FOR VALUES FROM (1)TO(2)" -c "ALTER TABLE p DETACH PARTITION p1 CONCURRENTLY"; do :; done&
> 
>     "p1_check" CHECK (true)
>     "p1_i_check" CHECK (i IS NOT NULL AND i >= 1 AND i < 2)

Not good.