On 2016-04-04 14:24:52 +0800, Craig Ringer wrote: > I don't feel like I've grasped this properly yet. I think it's referring to > the pg_logical/snapshots/ serialization, the use of which allows us to > avoid doing extra work in SnapBuildFindSnapshot(...), but doesn't seem to > be crucial for correct function. After all, decoding still restarts at the > restart_lsn and feeds relevant xact info into the snapshot builder, > accumulates invalidation information, etc.
restart_lsn is set to the last known point where a) all changes for ongoing transactions are available b) we can re-build visiblity information when we start reading from there. As we essentially can only start determining visibility information whenever processing a xl_running_xacts record. Building visibility information means that there has to be a xl_running_xacts to start from. To build full visibility information we also have to wait till we have seen all in-progress transactions finish. So we dump visibility information every now and then, so we can re-use the information we'd already assembled. Greetings, Andres Freund -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
