Re-think predicate locking on GIN indexes.
authorTeodor Sigaev <teodor@sigaev.ru>
Fri, 4 May 2018 08:27:50 +0000 (11:27 +0300)
committerTeodor Sigaev <teodor@sigaev.ru>
Fri, 4 May 2018 08:27:50 +0000 (11:27 +0300)
commit0bef1c0678d94436f80450d562a866bb6fa5e509
treefbcc3b758f520971188a8d9f6727e482f23afe02
parent7d8679975f650d1150d706c8b6a5f04f08dcdd00
Re-think predicate locking on GIN indexes.

The principle behind the locking was not very well thought-out, and not
documented. Add a section in the README to explain how it's supposed to
work, and change the code so that it actually works that way.

This fixes two bugs:

1. If fast update was turned on concurrently, subsequent inserts to the
   pending list would not conflict with predicate locks that were acquired
   earlier, on entry pages. The included 'predicate-gin-fastupdate' test
   demonstrates that. To fix, make all scans acquire a predicate lock on
   the metapage. That lock represents a scan of the pending list, whether
   or not there is a pending list at the moment. Forget about the
   optimization to skip locking/checking for locks, when fastupdate=off.
2. If a scan finds no match, it still needs to lock the entry page. The
   point of predicate locks is to lock the gabs between values, whether
   or not there is a match. The included 'predicate-gin-nomatch' test
   tests that case.

In addition to those two bug fixes, this removes some unnecessary locking,
following the principle laid out in the README. Because all items in
a posting tree have the same key value, a lock on the posting tree root is
enough to cover all the items. (With a very large posting tree, it would
possibly be better to lock the posting tree leaf pages instead, so that a
"skip scan" with a query like "A & B", you could avoid unnecessary conflict
if a new tuple is inserted with A but !B. But let's keep this simple.)

Also, some spelling  fixes.

Author: Heikki Linnakangas with some editorization by me
Review: Andrey Borodin, Alexander Korotkov
Discussion: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/0b3ad2c2-2692-62a9-3a04-5724f2af9114@iki.fi
18 files changed:
src/backend/access/gin/README
src/backend/access/gin/ginbtree.c
src/backend/access/gin/gindatapage.c
src/backend/access/gin/ginfast.c
src/backend/access/gin/ginget.c
src/backend/access/gin/gininsert.c
src/backend/access/gin/ginutil.c
src/backend/access/gin/ginvacuum.c
src/backend/access/gist/gist.c
src/backend/storage/lmgr/README-SSI
src/include/access/gin_private.h
src/test/isolation/expected/predicate-gin-fastupdate.out [new file with mode: 0644]
src/test/isolation/expected/predicate-gin-nomatch.out [new file with mode: 0644]
src/test/isolation/expected/predicate-gin.out
src/test/isolation/isolation_schedule
src/test/isolation/specs/predicate-gin-fastupdate.spec [new file with mode: 0644]
src/test/isolation/specs/predicate-gin-nomatch.spec [new file with mode: 0644]
src/test/isolation/specs/predicate-gin.spec