In progress INSERT wrecks plans on table

Recently we encountered the following unhappy sequence of events:

1/ system running happily
2/ batch load into table begins
3/ very quickly (some) preexisting queries on said table go orders of
magnitude slower
4/ database instance becomes unresponsive
5/ application outage

After looking down a few false leads, We've isolated the cause to the
following:

The accumulating in-progress row changes are such that previously
optimal plans are optimal no longer. Now this situation will fix itself
when the next autoanalyze happens (and new plan will be chosen) -
however that cannot occur until the batch load is completed and
committed (approx 70 seconds). However during that time there is enough
of a performance degradation for queries still using the old plan to
cripple the server.

Now that we know what is happening we can work around it. But I'm
wondering - is there any way (or if not should there be one) to let
postgres handle this automatically? I experimented with a quick hack to
src/backend/commands/analyze.c (attached) that lets another session's
ANALYZE see in progress rows - which works but a) may cause other
problems and b) does not help autoaanalyze which has to wait for COMMIT
+ stats message.

I've attached a (synthetic) test case that shows the issue, I'll
reproduce the output below to hopefully make the point obvious:


                Table "public.plan"
  Column |            Type             | Modifiers
--------+-----------------------------+-----------
  id     | integer                     | not null
  typ    | integer                     | not null
  dat    | timestamp without time zone |
  val    | text                        | not null
Indexes:
     "plan_id" UNIQUE, btree (id)
     "plan_dat" btree (dat)
     "plan_typ" btree (typ)


[Session 1]
EXPLAIN ANALYZE
SELECT * FROM plan
WHERE typ = 3 AND dat IS NOT NULL;
                                                      QUERY PLAN
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Index Scan using plan_dat on plan  (cost=0.00..265.47 rows=55
width=117) (actual time=0.130..4.409 rows=75 loops=1)
    Index Cond: (dat IS NOT NULL)
    Filter: (typ = 3)
    Rows Removed by Filter: 5960
  Total runtime: 4.440 ms
(5 rows)

[Session 2]

BEGIN;
INSERT INTO plan
SELECT id + 2000001,typ,current_date + id * '1 seconds'::interval ,val
FROM plan
;

[Session 1]
EXPLAIN ANALYZE
SELECT * FROM plan
WHERE typ = 3 AND dat IS NOT NULL;

                                                       QUERY PLAN
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Index Scan using plan_dat on plan  (cost=0.00..551.35 rows=91
width=117) (actual time=0.131..202.699 rows=75 loops=1)
    Index Cond: (dat IS NOT NULL)
    Filter: (typ = 3)
    Rows Removed by Filter: 5960
  Total runtime: 202.729 ms
(5 rows)
[Session 2]
COMMIT;

[Session 1...wait for autoanalyze to finish then]

EXPLAIN ANALYZE
SELECT * FROM plan
WHERE typ = 3 AND dat IS NOT NULL;
QUERY PLAN

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Bitmap Heap Scan on plan  (cost=407.87..44991.95 rows=10116 width=117)
(actual time=2.692..6.582 rows=75 loops=1)
    Recheck Cond: (typ = 3)
    Filter: (dat IS NOT NULL)
    Rows Removed by Filter: 19925
    ->  Bitmap Index Scan on plan_typ  (cost=0.00..405.34 rows=20346
width=0) (actual time=2.573..2.573 rows=20000 loops=1)
          Index Cond: (typ = 3)
  Total runtime: 6.615 ms


Regards

Mark