Re: Improve WALRead() to suck data directly from WAL buffers when possible

Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>

From: Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>
To: Jeff Davis <pgsql@j-davis.com>
Cc: Bharath Rupireddy <bharath.rupireddyforpostgres@gmail.com>, Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>, Dilip Kumar <dilipbalaut@gmail.com>, Kyotaro Horiguchi <horikyota.ntt@gmail.com>, pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org, Masahiko Sawada <sawada.mshk@gmail.com>
Date: 2023-10-25T01:54:01Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers

Commits

Same data as JSON: GET /api/v1/messages/:b64id/commits the thread's linked commits as JSON, with link sources. API reference →
  1. Add XLogCtl->logInsertResult

  2. Add assert to WALReadFromBuffers().

  3. Read WAL directly from WAL buffers.

  4. Additional write barrier in AdvanceXLInsertBuffer().

  5. Use 64-bit atomics for xlblocks array elements.

  6. Don't trust unvalidated xl_tot_len.

On Tue, Oct 24, 2023 at 05:15:19PM -0700, Jeff Davis wrote:
> * Are you sure that reducing the number of calls to memcpy() is a win?
> I would expect that to be true only if the memcpy()s are tiny, but here
> they are around XLOG_BLCKSZ. I believe this was done based on a comment
> from Nathan Bossart, but I didn't really follow why that's important.
> Also, if we try to use one memcpy for all of the data, it might not
> interact well with my idea above to avoid taking the lock.

I don't recall exactly why I suggested this, but if additional memcpy()s
help in some way and don't negatively impact performance, then I retract my
previous comment.

-- 
Nathan Bossart
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