diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/maintenance.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/maintenance.sgml index 5204b34..8b966cc 100644 --- a/doc/src/sgml/maintenance.sgml +++ b/doc/src/sgml/maintenance.sgml @@ -403,28 +403,22 @@ The reason that periodic vacuuming solves the problem is that - VACUUM will mark rows as frozen, indicating that - they were inserted by a transaction which committed sufficiently far in - the past that the effects of the inserting transaction is certain to be - visible, from an MVCC perspective, to all current and future transactions. - PostgreSQL reserves a special XID, - FrozenTransactionId, which does not follow the normal XID - comparison rules and is always considered older - than every normal XID. Normal XIDs are - compared using modulo-232 arithmetic. This means - that for every normal XID, there are two billion XIDs that are - older and two billion that are newer; another - way to say it is that the normal XID space is circular with no - endpoint. Therefore, once a row version has been created with a particular - normal XID, the row version will appear to be in the past for - the next two billion transactions, no matter which normal XID we are - talking about. If the row version still exists after more than two billion - transactions, it will suddenly appear to be in the future. To - prevent this, frozen row versions are treated as if the inserting XID were - FrozenTransactionId, so that they will appear to be - in the past to all normal transactions regardless of wraparound - issues, and so such row versions will be valid until deleted, no matter - how long that is. + VACUUM will mark rows as frozen (by setting + appropriate hint bits), indicating that they were inserted by a transaction + which committed sufficiently far in the past that the effects of the + inserting transaction is certain to be visible, from an MVCC perspective, + to all current and future transactions. Usually XIDs are compared using + modulo-232 arithmetic. This means that for every XID, there + are two billion XIDs that are older and two billion that are + newer; another way to say it is that the XID space is circular + with no endpoint. Therefore, once a row version has been created with a + particular XID, the row version will appear to be in the past for + the next two billion transactions. If the row version still exists after + more than two billion transactions, it will suddenly appear to be in the + future. To prevent this, usual visibility rules are not applied to frozen + row versions. Instead they are considered to be in the past to + all transactions regardless of wraparound issues, and so such row versions + will be valid until deleted, no matter how long that is.