On 1/26/2007 11:58 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
Jan Wieck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
On 1/26/2007 8:06 AM, Gregory Stark wrote:
It seems simpler to have a current_snapshot() function that returns an bytea
or a new snapshot data type which set_current_snapshot(bytea) took to change
your snapshot. Then you could use tables or out-of-band communication to pass
around your snapshots however you please.
set_current_snapshot() would have to sanity check that the xmin of the new
snapshot isn't older than the current globaloldestxmin.

That would solve the backend to backend IPC problem nicely.

But it fails on the count of making sure that globaloldestxmin doesn't
advance past the snap you want to use.  And exactly how will you pass
a snap through a table?  It won't become visible until you commit ...
whereupon your own xmin isn't blocking the advance of globaloldestxmin.

The client receives the snapshot information as a result from the function call to current_snapshot(). The call to set_current_snapshot(snap) errors out if snap's xmin is older than globaloldestxmin. It is the client app that has to make sure that the transaction that created snap is still in progress.

I didn't say passing anything through a table.

Take a modified pg_dump as an example. It could write multiple files. A pre-load sql with the first part of the schema. Then a post-load sql with the finalization of same (creating indexes, adding constraints). It then builds a list of all relations to COPY, starts n threads each writing a different file. Each thread connects to the DB and adjusts the snapshot to the one of the main transaction (which is still open). Then each thread grabs the next table to dump from the list and writes the COPY data to its output file. The threads exit when the list of tables is empty. The main thread waits until the last thread has joined and commits the main transaction.

Wouldn't be too hard to write a script that restores that split dump in parallel as well.


Jan

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