Re: Skipping logical replication transactions on subscriber side

David G. Johnston <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>

From: "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>
To: Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@enterprisedb.com>
Cc: Amit Kapila <amit.kapila16@gmail.com>, Masahiko Sawada <sawada.mshk@gmail.com>, "tanghy.fnst@fujitsu.com" <tanghy.fnst@fujitsu.com>, vignesh C <vignesh21@gmail.com>, Greg Nancarrow <gregn4422@gmail.com>, "houzj.fnst@fujitsu.com" <houzj.fnst@fujitsu.com>, "osumi.takamichi@fujitsu.com" <osumi.takamichi@fujitsu.com>, Alexey Lesovsky <lesovsky@gmail.com>, PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2022-01-25T14:35:32Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
On Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 5:52 AM Peter Eisentraut <
peter.eisentraut@enterprisedb.com> wrote:

> On 25.01.22 06:18, Amit Kapila wrote:
> > I think to avoid this we can send a message to clear this (at least to
> > clear XID in the view) after skipping the xact but there is no
> > guarantee that it will be received by the stats collector.
> > Additionally, the worker can periodically (say after every N (100,
> > 500, etc) successful transaction) send a clear message after
> > successful apply. This will ensure that eventually the error entry
> > will be cleared.
>
> Well, I think we need *some* solution for now.  We can't leave a footgun
> where you say, "skip transaction 700", somehow transaction 700 doesn't
> happen, the whole thing gets forgotten, but then 3 months later, the
> next transaction 700 mysteriously gets dropped.
>

This is indeed part of why I feel that the xid being skipped should be
validated.  As the feature is presented the user is supposed to read the
xid from the system (the new stat view or the error log) and supply it and
then the worker, when it goes to skip, should find that the very first
transaction xid it encounters is the one it is being told to skip.  It
skips that transaction, clears the skipxid, and puts the system back into
normal operating mode.  If that first transaction xid isn't the one being
specified to skip the worker should error with "skipping transaction
failed, xid 123 expected but 456 found".

This whole lack of a guarantee of the availability and accuracy regarding
the data that this process should be reliant upon needs to be engineered
away.

David J.

Commits

  1. Test ALIGNOF_DOUBLE==4 compatibility under ALIGNOF_DOUBLE==8.

  2. Reorder subskiplsn in pg_subscription to avoid alignment issues.

  3. Add ALTER SUBSCRIPTION ... SKIP.

  4. Optionally disable subscriptions on error.

  5. Update docs of logical replication for commit 8d74fc96db.

  6. Respect permissions within logical replication.

  7. Fix regression test failure caused by commit 8d74fc96db.

  8. Add a view to show the stats of subscription workers.

  9. Add logical change details to logical replication worker errcontext.

  10. Rename LOGICAL_REP_MSG_STREAM_END to LOGICAL_REP_MSG_STREAM_STOP.

  11. Fix typo in protocol.sgml.

  12. Remove unused argument in apply_handle_commit_internal().

  13. Fix replication of in-progress transactions in tablesync worker.

  14. Reorder pg_sequence columns to avoid alignment issue