Horton

Re: Statistics Import and Export

Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>

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From: Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>
To: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Cc: Corey Huinker <corey.huinker@gmail.com>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, Jeff Davis <pgsql@j-davis.com>, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, Michael Paquier <michael@paquier.xyz>, jian he <jian.universality@gmail.com>, Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>, Matthias van de Meent <boekewurm+postgres@gmail.com>, Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net>, Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net>, Ashutosh Bapat <ashutosh.bapat.oss@gmail.com>, Peter Smith <smithpb2250@gmail.com>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>, alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org
Date: 2025-03-06T18:22:12Z
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. Change pg_dump default for statistics export.

  2. pg_dump: Adjust reltuples from 0 to -1 for dumps of older versions.

  3. vacuumdb: Don't skip empty relations in --missing-stats-only mode.

  4. pg_dump: Fix query for gathering attribute stats on older versions.

  5. Prevent redeclaration of typedef TocEntry.

  6. Remove unused function parameters in pg_backup_archiver.c.

  7. pg_dump: Retrieve attribute statistics in batches.

  8. pg_dump: Reduce memory usage of dumps with statistics.

  9. Skip second WriteToc() call for custom-format dumps without data.

  10. Add relallfrozen to pg_dump statistics.

  11. Matview statistics depend on matview data.

  12. Add pg_dump --with-{schema|data|statistics} options.

  13. Stats: use schemaname/relname instead of regclass.

  14. CREATE INDEX: do update index stats if autovacuum=off.

  15. Don't convert to and from floats in pg_dump.

  16. CREATE INDEX: don't update table stats if autovacuum=off.

  17. Organize and deduplicate statistics import tests.

  18. Address stats export review comments.

  19. Address stats import review comments.

  20. Add relallfrozen to pg_class

  21. Fix pg_strtof() to not crash on NULL endptr.

  22. Use attnum to identify index columns in pg_restore_attribute_stats().

  23. pg_dump: prepare attribute stats query.

  24. Avoid unnecessary relation stats query in pg_dump.

  25. Remove redundant pg_set_*_stats() variants.

  26. Do not use in-place updates for statistics import.

  27. Fix confusion about data type of pg_class.relpages and relallvisible.

  28. Documentation fixups for dumping statistics.

  29. Trial fix for old cross-version upgrades.

  30. Transfer statistics during pg_upgrade.

  31. Lock table in ShareUpdateExclusive when importing index stats.

  32. Use in-place updates for pg_restore_relation_stats().

  33. Improve error message for replication of generated columns.

  34. pg_dump: Add dumpSchema and dumpData derivative flags.

  35. Disallow modifying statistics on system columns.

  36. Add missing CommandCounterIncrement() in stats import functions.

  37. Add functions pg_restore_relation_stats(), pg_restore_attribute_stats().

  38. Documentation fixup.

  39. Add functions pg_set_attribute_stats() and pg_clear_attribute_stats().

  40. Change pg_*_relation_stats() functions to return type to void.

  41. Disable autovacuum for tables in stats import tests.

  42. Allow pg_set_relation_stats() to set relpages to -1.

  43. Fixup for pg_set_relation_stats().

  44. Create functions pg_set_relation_stats, pg_clear_relation_stats.

  45. Add memory/disk usage for Window aggregate nodes in EXPLAIN.

  46. Improve performance of dumpSequenceData().

  47. Add INJECTION_POINT_CACHED() to run injection points directly from cache

  48. Improve performance of binary_upgrade_set_pg_class_oids().

  49. Improve assertion in mdwritev()

  50. CREATE INDEX: do not update stats during binary upgrade.

  51. Redefine pg_class.reltuples to be -1 before the first VACUUM or ANALYZE.

On Thu, Mar 06, 2025 at 01:04:55PM -0500, Andres Freund wrote:
> To be clear, I think this is a very important improvement that most people
> should use.

+1

> I just don't think it's quite there yet.

I agree that we should continue working on the performance/memory stuff.

> 1) It's a difference of seconds in the regression database, which has a few
>    hundred tables, few columns, very little data and thus small stats. In a
>    database with a lot of tables and columns with complicated datatypes the
>    difference will be far larger.
> 
>    And in contrast to analyzing the database in parallel, the pg_dump/restore
>    work to restore stats afaict happens single-threaded for each database.

Yeah, I did a lot of work in v18 to rein in pg_dump --binary-upgrade
runtime, and I'm a bit worried that this will undo much of that.  Obviously
it's going to increase runtime by some amount, which is acceptable, but it
needs to be within reason.  I'm optimistic this is within reach for v18 by
reducing the number of queries.

> I care about the memory usage effects because I've seen plenty systems where
> pg_statistics is many gigabytes (after toast compression!), and I am really
> worried that pg_dump having all the serialized strings in memory will cause a
> lot of previously working pg_dump invocations and pg_upgrades to fail. That'd
> also be a really bad experience.

I think it is entirely warranted to consider these cases.  IME cases of "a
million tables" or "a million sequences" are far more common than you might
think.

-- 
nathan