Re: Patch: Write Amplification Reduction Method (WARM)

Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>

From: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
To: Pavan Deolasee <pavan.deolasee@gmail.com>
Cc: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com>, Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>, Jaime Casanova <jaime.casanova@2ndquadrant.com>, Haribabu Kommi <kommi.haribabu@gmail.com>, Tomas Vondra <tomas.vondra@2ndquadrant.com>, pgsql-hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2017-02-24T16:17:05Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
On Fri, Feb 24, 2017 at 4:06 PM, Pavan Deolasee
<pavan.deolasee@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Wow, OK.  In my view, that makes the chain conversion code pretty much
>> essential, because if you had WARM without chain conversion then the
>> visibility map gets more or less irrevocably less effective over time,
>> which sounds terrible.
>
> Yes. I decided to complete chain conversion patch when I realised that IOS
> will otherwise become completely useful if large percentage of rows are
> updated just once. So I agree. It's not an optional patch and should get in
> with the main WARM patch.

Right, and it's not just index-only scans.  VACUUM gets permanently
more expensive, too, which is probably a much worse problem.

>> But it sounds to me like even with the chain
>> conversion, it might take multiple vacuum passes before all visibility
>> map bits are set, which isn't such a great property (thus e.g.
>> fdf9e21196a6f58c6021c967dc5776a16190f295).
>
> The chain conversion algorithm first converts the chains during vacuum and
> then checks if the page can be set all-visible. So I'm not sure why it would
> take multiple vacuums before a page is set all-visible. The commit you quote
> was written to ensure that we make another attempt to set the page
> all-visible after al dead tuples are removed from the page. Similarly, we
> will convert all WARM chains to HOT chains and then check for all-visibility
> of the page.

OK, that sounds good.  And there are no bugs, right?  :-)

-- 
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company


Commits

  1. Implement SortSupport for macaddr data type

  2. Simplify check of modified attributes in heap_update

  3. Remove direct uses of ItemPointer.{ip_blkid,ip_posid}

  4. Fix CatalogTupleInsert/Update abstraction for case of shared indstate.

  5. Provide CatalogTupleDelete() as a wrapper around simple_heap_delete().

  6. Band-aid fix for incorrect use of view options as StdRdOptions.

  7. Update visibility map in the second phase of vacuum.

  8. Avoid having two copies of the HOT-chain search logic.

  9. Postgres95 1.01 Distribution - Virgin Sources