Logical Replication - behavior of ALTER PUBLICATION .. DROP TABLE and ALTER SUBSCRIPTION .. REFRESH PUBLICATION

Hi,

While providing thoughts on the design in [1], I found a strange
behaviour with the $subject. The use case is shown below as a sequence
of steps that need to be run on publisher and subscriber to arrive at
the strange behaviour.  In step 5, the table is dropped from the
publication and in step 6, the refresh publication is run on the
subscriber, from here onwards, the expectation is that no further
inserts into the publisher table have to be replicated on to the
subscriber, but the opposite happens i.e. the inserts are still
replicated to the subscriber. ISTM as a bug. Let me know if I'm
missing anything.

Thoughts?

step 1) on the publisher:
DROP TABLE t1;
DROP PUBLICATION mypub1;
CREATE TABLE t1 (a int);
INSERT INTO t1 VALUES (1);
CREATE PUBLICATION mypub1 FOR TABLE t1;
postgres=# SELECT r1.*, r2.relname, r3.* FROM pg_publication_rel r1,
pg_class r2, pg_publication r3 WHERE r1.prrelid = r2.oid AND
r1.prpubid = r3.oid;
  oid  | prpubid | prrelid | relname |  oid  | pubname | pubowner |
puballtables | pubinsert | pubupdate | pubdelete | pubtruncate |
pubviaroot

-------+---------+---------+---------+-------+---------+----------+--------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-------------+------------
 16462 |   16461 |   16458 | t1      | 16461 | mypub1  |       10 | f
          | t         | t         | t         | t           | f
(1 row)

step 2) on the subscriber:
DROP TABLE t1;
DROP SUBSCRIPTION mysub1;
CREATE TABLE t1 (a int);
CREATE SUBSCRIPTION mysub1 CONNECTION 'host=localhost dbname=postgres
user=bharath port=5432' PUBLICATION mypub1;
postgres=# SELECT r1.*, r2.relname, r3.* FROM pg_subscription_rel r1,
pg_class r2, pg_subscription r3 WHERE r1.srrelid = r2.oid AND
r1.srsubid = r3.oid;
 srsubid | srrelid | srsubstate | srsublsn | relname |  oid  | subdbid
| subname | subowner | subenabled | subbinary | substream |
 subconninfo                      | subslotname | subsynccommit |
subpublications

---------+---------+------------+----------+---------+-------+---------+---------+----------+------------+-----------+-----------+---------------------
----------------------------------+-------------+---------------+-----------------
   16446 |   16443 | i          |          | t1      | 16446 |   12872
| mysub1  |       10 | t          | f         | f         |
host=localhost dbnam
e=postgres user=bharath port=5432 | mysub1      | off           | {mypub1}
(1 row)
postgres=# SELECT * FROM t1;
 a
---
 1
(1 row)

step 3) on the publisher:
INSERT INTO t1 VALUES (2);

step 4) on the subscriber:
postgres=# SELECT * FROM t1;
 a
---
 1
 2
(2 rows)

step 5) on the publisher:
ALTER PUBLICATION mypub1 DROP TABLE t1;
postgres=# SELECT r1.*, r2.relname, r3.* FROM pg_publication_rel r1,
pg_class r2, pg_publication r3 WHERE r1.prrelid = r2.oid AND
r1.prpubid = r3.oid;
 oid | prpubid | prrelid | relname | oid | pubname | pubowner |
puballtables | pubinsert | pubupdate | pubdelete | pubtruncate |
pubviaroot

-----+---------+---------+---------+-----+---------+----------+--------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-------------+------------
(0 rows)
INSERT INTO t1 VALUES (3);

step 6) on the subscriber:
postgres=# SELECT * FROM t1;
 a
---
 1
 2
 3
(3 rows)
ALTER SUBSCRIPTION mysub1 REFRESH PUBLICATION;
postgres=# SELECT r1.*, r2.relname, r3.* FROM pg_subscription_rel r1,
pg_class r2, pg_subscription r3 WHERE r1.srrelid = r2.oid AND
r1.srsubid = r3.oid;
 srsubid | srrelid | srsubstate | srsublsn | relname | oid | subdbid |
subname | subowner | subenabled | subbinary | substream | subconninfo
| subslotn
ame | subsynccommit | subpublications

---------+---------+------------+----------+---------+-----+---------+---------+----------+------------+-----------+-----------+-------------+---------
----+---------------+-----------------
(0 rows)

step 7) on the publisher:
INSERT INTO t1 VALUES (4);

step 8) on the subscriber:
postgres=# SELECT * FROM t1;
 a
---
 1
 2
 3
 4
(4 rows)

step 9) on the publisher:
INSERT INTO t1 SELECT * FROM generate_series(5,100);

step 10) on the subscriber:
postgres=# SELECT count(*) FROM t1;
 count
-------
   100
(1 row)

[1] - https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CAA4eK1L5TejNHNctyPB3GVuEriRQw6xxU32iMyv%3Dh4tCJKkLew%40mail.gmail.com

With Regards,
Bharath Rupireddy.
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com