Re: Perform streaming logical transactions by background workers and parallel apply

Amit Kapila <amit.kapila16@gmail.com>

From: Amit Kapila <amit.kapila16@gmail.com>
To: Peter Smith <smithpb2250@gmail.com>
Cc: "houzj.fnst@fujitsu.com" <houzj.fnst@fujitsu.com>, shveta malik <shveta.malik@gmail.com>, Masahiko Sawada <sawada.mshk@gmail.com>, "wangw.fnst@fujitsu.com" <wangw.fnst@fujitsu.com>, "shiy.fnst@fujitsu.com" <shiy.fnst@fujitsu.com>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>, Dilip Kumar <dilipbalaut@gmail.com>
Date: 2023-01-18T06:39:26Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
On Fri, Jan 13, 2023 at 11:50 AM Peter Smith <smithpb2250@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Here are some review comments for patch v79-0002.
>

So, this is about the latest v84-0001-Stop-extra-worker-if-GUC-was-changed.

> ======
>
> General
>
> 1.
>
> I saw that earlier in this thread Hou-san [1] and Amit [2] also seemed
> to say there is not much point for this patch.
>
> So I wanted to +1 that same opinion.
>
> I feel this patch just adds more complexity for almost no gain:
> - reducing the 'max_apply_workers_per_suibscription' seems not very
> common in the first place.
> - even when the GUC is reduced, at that point in time all the workers
> might be in use so there may be nothing that can be immediately done.
> - IIUC the excess workers (for a reduced GUC) are going to get freed
> naturally anyway over time as more transactions are completed so the
> pool size will reduce accordingly.
>

I am still not sure if it is worth pursuing this patch because of the
above reasons. I don't think it would be difficult to add this even at
a later point in time if we really see a use case for this.
Sawada-San, IIRC, you raised this point. What do you think?

The other point I am wondering is whether we can have a different way
to test partial serialization apart from introducing another developer
GUC (stream_serialize_threshold). One possibility could be that we can
have a subscription option (parallel_send_timeout or something like
that) with some default value (current_timeout used in the patch)
which will be used only when streaming = parallel. Users may want to
wait for more time before serialization starts depending on the
workload (say when resource usage is high on a subscriber-side
machine, or there are concurrent long-running transactions that can
block parallel apply for a bit longer time). I know with this as well
it may not be straightforward to test the functionality because we
can't be sure how many changes would be required for a timeout to
occur. This is just for brainstorming other options to test the
partial serialization functionality.

Thoughts?

-- 
With Regards,
Amit Kapila.



Commits

Same data as JSON: GET /api/v1/messages/:b64id/commits the thread's linked commits as JSON, with link sources. API reference →
  1. Fix invalid memory access during the shutdown of the parallel apply worker.

  2. Fix assertion failure in apply worker.

  3. Use elog to report unexpected action in handle_streamed_transaction().

  4. Use appropriate wait event when sending data in the apply worker.

  5. Allow the logical_replication_mode to be used on the subscriber.

  6. Rename GUC logical_decoding_mode to logical_replication_mode.

  7. Display the leader apply worker's PID for parallel apply workers.

  8. Improve the code to decide and process the apply action.

  9. Document the newly added wait events added by commit 216a784829.

  10. Perform apply of large transactions by parallel workers.

  11. Wake up a subscription's replication worker processes after DDL.

  12. Add copyright notices to meson files

  13. Better document logical replication parameters

  14. Add a common function to generate the origin name.

  15. Harmonize parameter names in storage and AM code.

  16. Avoid using list_length() to test for empty list.

  17. Improve two comments related to a boolean DefElem's value

  18. Fix partition table's REPLICA IDENTITY checking on the subscriber.

  19. Fix data inconsistency between publisher and subscriber.

  20. Fix cache look-up failures while applying changes in logical replication.