Re: parallel mode and parallel contexts

On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 9:37 PM, Jim Nasby <Jim.Nasby@bluetreble.com> wrote:
> CreateParallelContext(): Does it actually make sense to have nworkers=0?
> ISTM that's a bogus case.

I'm not sure whether we'll ever use the zero-worker case in
production, but I've certainly found it useful for
performance-testing.

> Also, since the number of workers will normally be
> determined dynamically by the planner, should that check be a regular
> conditional instead of just an Assert?

I don't think that's really necessary.  It shouldn't be too much of a
stretch for the planner to come up with a non-negative value.

> In LaunchParallelWorkers() the "Start Workers" comment states that we give
> up registering more workers if one fails to register, but there's nothing in
> the if condition to do that, and I don't see
> RegisterDynamicBackgroundWorker() doing it either. Is the comment just
> incorrect?

Woops, that got changed at some point and I forgot to update the
comment.  Will fix.

> SerializeTransactionState(): instead of looping through the transaction
> stack to calculate nxids, couldn't we just set it to maxsize -
> sizeof(TransactionId) * 3? If we're looping a second time for safety a
> comment explaining that would be useful...

Yeah, I guess we could do that.  I don't think it really matters very
much one way or the other.

> sequence.c: Is it safe to read a sequence value in a parallel worker if the
> cache_value is > 1?

No, because the sequence cache isn't synchronized between the workers.
Maybe it would be safe if cache_value == 1, but there's not much
use-case: how often are you going to have a read-only query that uses
a sequence value.  At some point we can look at making sequences
parallel-safe, but worrying about it right now doesn't seem like a
good use of time.

> This may be a dumb question, but for functions do we know that all pl's
> besides C and SQL use SPI? If not I think they could end up writing in a
> worker.

Well, the lower-level checks would catch that.  But it is generally
true that there's no way to prevent arbitrary C code from doing things
that are unsafe in parallel mode and that we can't tell are unsafe.
As I've said before, I think that we'll need to have a method of
labeling functions as parallel-safe or not, but this patch isn't
trying to solve that part of the problem.

> @@ -2968,7 +2969,8 @@ ProcessInterrupts(void)
>                                          errmsg("canceling statement due to
> user request")));
>                 }
>         }
> -       /* If we get here, do nothing (probably, QueryCancelPending was
> reset) */
> +       if (ParallelMessagePending)
> +               HandleParallelMessageInterrupt(false);
> ISTM it'd be good to leave that comment in place (after the if).
>
> RestoreComboCIDState(): Assert(!comboCids || !comboHash): Shouldn't that be
> &&? AIUI both should always be either set or 0.

Fixed.

> Typo: +         elog(ERROR, "cannot update SecondarySnapshpt during a
> parallel operation");

Fixed.

> The comment for RestoreSnapshot refers to set_transaction_snapshot, but that
> doesn't actually exist (or isn't referenced).

Fixed.

Will post a new version in a bit.

-- 
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company