Tag: partitions

Waiting for PostgreSQL 12 – Allow multi-inserts during COPY into a partitioned table

On 1st of August 2018, Peter Eisentraut committed patch:

Allow multi-inserts during COPY into a partitioned table
 
 
CopyFrom allows multi-inserts to be used for non-partitioned tables, but
this was disabled for partitioned tables.  The reason for this appeared
to be that the tuple may not belong to the same partition as the
previous tuple did.  Not allowing multi-inserts here greatly slowed down
imports into partitioned tables.  These could take twice as long as a
copy to an equivalent non-partitioned table.  It seems wise to do
something about this, so this change allows the multi-inserts by
flushing the so-far inserted tuples to the partition when the next tuple
does not belong to the same partition, or when the buffer fills.  This
improves performance when the next tuple in the stream commonly belongs
to the same partition as the previous tuple.
 
In cases where the target partition changes on every tuple, using
multi-inserts slightly slows the performance.  To get around this we
track the average size of the batches that have been inserted and
adaptively enable or disable multi-inserts based on the size of the
batch.  Some testing was done and the regression only seems to exist
when the average size of the insert batch is close to 1, so let's just
enable multi-inserts when the average size is at least 1.3.  More
performance testing might reveal a better number for, this, but since
the slowdown was only 1-2% it does not seem critical enough to spend too
much time calculating it.  In any case it may depend on other factors
rather than just the size of the batch.
 
Allowing multi-inserts for partitions required a bit of work around the
per-tuple memory contexts as we must flush the tuples when the next
tuple does not belong the same partition.  In which case there is no
good time to reset the per-tuple context, as we've already built the new
tuple by this time.  In order to work around this we maintain two
per-tuple contexts and just switch between them every time the partition
changes and reset the old one.  This does mean that the first of each
batch of tuples is not allocated in the same memory context as the
others, but that does not matter since we only reset the context once
the previous batch has been inserted.
 
Author: David Rowley <david.rowley@2ndquadrant.com>

Continue reading Waiting for PostgreSQL 12 – Allow multi-inserts during COPY into a partitioned table

Waiting for PostgreSQL 11 – Improve run-time partition pruning to handle any stable expression.

On 10th of June 2018, Tom Lane committed patch:

Improve run-time partition pruning to handle any stable expression.
 
 
The initial coding of the run-time-pruning feature only coped with cases
where the partition key(s) are compared to Params.  That is a bit silly;
we can allow it to work with any non-Var-containing stable expression, as
long as we take special care with expressions containing PARAM_EXEC Params.
The code is hardly any longer this way, and it's considerably clearer
(IMO at least).  Per gripe from Pavel Stehule.
 
David Rowley, whacked around a bit by me
 
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAFj8pRBjrufA3ocDm8o4LPGNye9Y+pm1b9kCwode4X04CULG3g@mail.gmail.com

Continue reading Waiting for PostgreSQL 11 – Improve run-time partition pruning to handle any stable expression.

Waiting for PostgreSQL 11 – Support partition pruning at execution time

On 7th of April 2018, Alvaro Herrera committed patch:

Support partition pruning at execution time
 
 
Existing partition pruning is only able to work at plan time, for query
quals that appear in the parsed query.  This is good but limiting, as
there can be parameters that appear later that can be usefully used to
further prune partitions.
 
This commit adds support for pruning subnodes of Append which cannot
possibly contain any matching tuples, during execution, by evaluating
Params to determine the minimum set of subnodes that can possibly match.
We support more than just simple Params in WHERE clauses. Support
additionally includes:
 
1. Parameterized Nested Loop Joins: The parameter from the outer side of the
   join can be used to determine the minimum set of inner side partitions to
   scan.
 
2. Initplans: Once an initplan has been executed we can then determine which
   partitions match the value from the initplan.
 
Partition pruning is performed in two ways.  When Params external to the plan
are found to match the partition key we attempt to prune away unneeded Append
subplans during the initialization of the executor.  This allows us to bypass
the initialization of non-matching subplans meaning they won't appear in the
EXPLAIN or EXPLAIN ANALYZE output.
 
For parameters whose value is only known during the actual execution
then the pruning of these subplans must wait.  Subplans which are
eliminated during this stage of pruning are still visible in the EXPLAIN
output.  In order to determine if pruning has actually taken place, the
EXPLAIN ANALYZE must be viewed.  If a certain Append subplan was never
executed due to the elimination of the partition then the execution
timing area will state "(never executed)".  Whereas, if, for example in
the case of parameterized nested loops, the number of loops stated in
the EXPLAIN ANALYZE output for certain subplans may appear lower than
others due to the subplan having been scanned fewer times.  This is due
to the list of matching subnodes having to be evaluated whenever a
parameter which was found to match the partition key changes.
 
This commit required some additional infrastructure that permits the
building of a data structure which is able to perform the translation of
the matching partition IDs, as returned by get_matching_partitions, into
the list index of a subpaths list, as exist in node types such as
Append, MergeAppend and ModifyTable.  This allows us to translate a list
of clauses into a Bitmapset of all the subpath indexes which must be
included to satisfy the clause list.
 
Author: David Rowley, based on an earlier effort by Beena Emerson
Reviewers: Amit Langote, Robert Haas, Amul Sul, Rajkumar Raghuwanshi,
Jesper Pedersen
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAOG9ApE16ac-_VVZVvv0gePSgkg_BwYEV1NBqZFqDR2bBE0X0A@mail.gmail.com

Continue reading Waiting for PostgreSQL 11 – Support partition pruning at execution time

Waiting for PostgreSQL 11 – Allow UPDATE to move rows between partitions.

On 19th of January 2018, Robert Haas committed patch:

Allow UPDATE to move rows between partitions.
 
 
When an UPDATE causes a row to no longer match the partition
constraint, try to move it to a different partition where it does
match the partition constraint.  In essence, the UPDATE is split into
a DELETE from the old partition and an INSERT into the new one.  This
can lead to surprising behavior in concurrency scenarios because
EvalPlanQual rechecks won't work as they normally did; the known
problems are documented.  (There is a pending patch to improve the
situation further, but it needs more review.)
 
Amit Khandekar, reviewed and tested by Amit Langote, David Rowley,
Rajkumar Raghuwanshi, Dilip Kumar, Amul Sul, Thomas Munro, Álvaro
Herrera, Amit Kapila, and me.  A few final revisions by me.
 
Discussion: http://postgr.es/m/CAJ3gD9do9o2ccQ7j7+tSgiE1REY65XRiMb=yJO3u3QhyP8EEPQ@mail.gmail.com

Continue reading Waiting for PostgreSQL 11 – Allow UPDATE to move rows between partitions.

Waiting for PostgreSQL 10 – Implement table partitioning.

I had two month delay related to some work, but now I can finally write about:

On 7th of December, Robert Haas committed patch:

Implement table partitioning.
 
Table partitioning is like table inheritance and reuses much of the
existing infrastructure, but there are some important differences.
The parent is called a partitioned table and is always empty; it may
not have indexes or non-inherited constraints, since those make no
sense for a relation with no data of its own.  The children are called
partitions and contain all of the actual data.  Each partition has an
implicit partitioning constraint.  Multiple inheritance is not
allowed, and partitioning and inheritance can't be mixed.  Partitions
can't have extra columns and may not allow nulls unless the parent
does.  Tuples inserted into the parent are automatically routed to the
correct partition, so tuple-routing ON INSERT triggers are not needed.
Tuple routing isn't yet supported for partitions which are foreign
tables, and it doesn't handle updates that cross partition boundaries.
 
Currently, tables can be range-partitioned or list-partitioned.  List
partitioning is limited to a single column, but range partitioning can
involve multiple columns.  A partitioning "column" can be an
expression.
 
Because table partitioning is less general than table inheritance, it
is hoped that it will be easier to reason about properties of
partitions, and therefore that this will serve as a better foundation
for a variety of possible optimizations, including query planner
optimizations.  The tuple routing based which this patch does based on
the implicit partitioning constraints is an example of this, but it
seems likely that many other useful optimizations are also possible.
 
Amit Langote, reviewed and tested by Robert Haas, Ashutosh Bapat,
Amit Kapila, Rajkumar Raghuwanshi, Corey Huinker, Jaime Casanova,
Rushabh Lathia, Erik Rijkers, among others.  Minor revisions by me.

Continue reading Waiting for PostgreSQL 10 – Implement table partitioning.

Partitioning – what? why? how?

Recently I noticed that more and more cases that I deal with could use some partitioning. And while theoretically most people know about it, it's definitely not a very well-understood feature, and sometimes people are scared of it.

So, I'll try to explain, to my best knowledge, what it is, why one would want to use it, and how to actually make it happen.

Continue reading Partitioning – what? why? how?

Waiting for 9.5 – Allow foreign tables to participate in inheritance. – A.K.A. PostgreSQL got sharding.

On 22nd of March, Tom Lane committed patch:

Allow foreign tables to participate in inheritance.
 
Foreign tables can now be inheritance children, or parents.  Much of the
system was already ready for this, but we had to fix a few things of
course, mostly in the area of planner and executor handling of row locks.
 
As side effects of this, allow foreign tables to have NOT VALID CHECK
constraints (and hence to accept ALTER ... VALIDATE CONSTRAINT), and to
accept ALTER SET STORAGE and ALTER SET WITH/WITHOUT OIDS.  Continuing to
disallow these things would've required bizarre and inconsistent special
cases in inheritance behavior.  Since foreign tables don't enforce CHECK
constraints anyway, a NOT VALID one is a complete no-op, but that doesn't
mean we shouldn't allow it.  And it's possible that some FDWs might have
use for SET STORAGE or SET WITH OIDS, though doubtless they will be no-ops
for most.
 
An additional change in support of this is that when a ModifyTable node
has multiple target tables, they will all now be explicitly identified
in EXPLAIN output, for example:
 
 Update on pt1  (cost=0.00..321.05 rows=3541 width=46)
   Update on pt1
   Foreign Update on ft1
   Foreign Update on ft2
   Update on child3
   ->  Seq Scan on pt1  (cost=0.00..0.00 rows=1 width=46)
   ->  Foreign Scan on ft1  (cost=100.00..148.03 rows=1170 width=46)
   ->  Foreign Scan on ft2  (cost=100.00..148.03 rows=1170 width=46)
   ->  Seq Scan on child3  (cost=0.00..25.00 rows=1200 width=46)
 
This was done mainly to provide an unambiguous place to attach "Remote SQL"
fields, but it is useful for inherited updates even when no foreign tables
are involved.
 
Shigeru Hanada and Etsuro Fujita, reviewed by Ashutosh Bapat and Kyotaro
Horiguchi, some additional hacking by me

Continue reading Waiting for 9.5 – Allow foreign tables to participate in inheritance. – A.K.A. PostgreSQL got sharding.

Waiting for 8.4 – window functions

A long overdue post about new functionality. At this moment it is no longer such new, as it was committed on 28th of December (yes, I know, I should have written it earlier, Sorry).

On this day Tom Lane committed patch by Hitoshi Harada which adds support for so called window functions:

Support window functions a la SQL:2008.
 
Hitoshi Harada, with some kibitzing from Heikki and Tom.

Continue reading Waiting for 8.4 – window functions