Re: Snapshot synchronization, again...

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

From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
Cc: Joachim Wieland <joe@mcknight.de>, Heikki Linnakangas <heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com>, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com>, Noah Misch <noah@leadboat.com>, pgsql-hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2011-02-28T17:59:56Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 8:33 PM, Joachim Wieland <joe@mcknight.de> wrote:
>> Remember that it's not only about saving shared memory, it's also
>> about making sure that the snapshot reflects a state of the database
>> that has actually existed at some point in the past.

> But you can do all of this with files too, can't you?  Just remove or
> truncate the file when the snapshot is no longer valid.

Yeah.  I think adopting a solution similar to 2PC state files is a very
reasonable way to go here.  This isn't likely to be a high-usage or
performance-critical feature, so it's not essential to keep the
information in shared memory for performance reasons.

			regards, tom lane