Re: [PERFORM] Re: [HACKERS] [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Fix TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId() to use binary search

2008-04-26 Thread Robert Treat
On Friday 25 April 2008 17:32, Tom Lane wrote:
 Robert Treat [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  Oddly some dtrace profiling gave me this, which is pretty different, but
  certainly doesn't have concerns about TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId

  which seems to pretty much destroy your thesis, no?


How so? Before the patch we bog down for hours, spending 99% of our time in  
TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId, after the patch everything performs well 
(really better than before) and we spend so little time in 
TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId it barely shows up on the radar. 

Note I'm open to the idea that TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId itself is 
not the problem, but that something else changed between 8.1 and 8.3 that 
exposes TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId as a problem.  Changing to a 
binary search for TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId  makes that a non-issue 
though. 

-- 
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

-- 
Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance


Re: [PERFORM] Re: [HACKERS] [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Fix TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId() to use binary search

2008-04-26 Thread Tom Lane
Robert Treat [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 On Friday 25 April 2008 17:32, Tom Lane wrote:
 Robert Treat [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 Oddly some dtrace profiling gave me this, which is pretty different, but
 certainly doesn't have concerns about TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId
 
  which seems to pretty much destroy your thesis, no?

 How so? Before the patch we bog down for hours, spending 99% of our time in  
 TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId, after the patch everything performs well
 (really better than before) and we spend so little time in 
 TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId it barely shows up on the radar. 

Oh, you failed to state that the dtrace output was post-patch.  You need
to show *pre* patch dtrace output if you want us to think it relevant.

regards, tom lane

-- 
Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance


Re: [PERFORM] Re: [HACKERS] [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Fix TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId() to use binary search

2008-04-26 Thread Robert Treat
On Saturday 26 April 2008 13:26, Tom Lane wrote:
 Robert Treat [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  On Friday 25 April 2008 17:32, Tom Lane wrote:
  Robert Treat [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  Oddly some dtrace profiling gave me this, which is pretty different,
  but certainly doesn't have concerns about
  TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId
 
   which seems to pretty much destroy your thesis, no?
 
  How so? Before the patch we bog down for hours, spending 99% of our time
  in TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId, after the patch everything
  performs well (really better than before) and we spend so little time in
  TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId it barely shows up on the radar.

 Oh, you failed to state that the dtrace output was post-patch.  You need
 to show *pre* patch dtrace output if you want us to think it relevant.


Please read up-thread. 

-- 
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

-- 
Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance


Re: [PERFORM] Re: [HACKERS] [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Fix TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId() to use binary search

2008-04-26 Thread Tom Lane
Robert Treat [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 On Saturday 26 April 2008 13:26, Tom Lane wrote:
 Oh, you failed to state that the dtrace output was post-patch.  You need
 to show *pre* patch dtrace output if you want us to think it relevant.

 Please read up-thread. 

Sorry, I'd forgotten your previous post.

I poked around for calls to TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId that
are in current code and weren't in 8.1.  I found these:

src/backend/commands/analyze.c: 965:if 
(TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId(HeapTupleHeaderGetXmin(targtuple.t_data)))
src/backend/commands/analyze.c: 984:if 
(TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId(HeapTupleHeaderGetXmax(targtuple.t_data)))
src/backend/commands/cluster.c: 803:if 
(!TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId(
src/backend/commands/cluster.c: 816:if 
(!TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId(
src/backend/storage/ipc/procarray.c: 374:   if 
(TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId(xid))
src/backend/utils/time/combocid.c: 108: 
Assert(TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId(HeapTupleHeaderGetXmin(tup)));
src/backend/utils/time/combocid.c: 123: 
Assert(TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId(HeapTupleHeaderGetXmax(tup)));
src/backend/utils/time/combocid.c: 156: 
TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId(HeapTupleHeaderGetXmin(tup)))

The ANALYZE and CLUSTER calls are not likely to be your issue, but the
one in HeapTupleHeaderAdjustCmax could get called a lot, and the one
in TransactionIdIsInProgress definitely will get called a lot.
Neither of those calls existed in 8.2.

So I think that explains why TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId has
become more performance-critical in 8.3 than it was before.  Will
apply the back-patch.

regards, tom lane

-- 
Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance


Re: [PERFORM] Re: [HACKERS] [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Fix TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId() to use binary search

2008-04-25 Thread Robert Treat
On Monday 21 April 2008 12:54, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
 Robert Treat wrote:
  Unfortunatly I don't have the 8.1 system to bang on anymore for this,
  (though anecdotaly speaking, I never saw this behavior in 8.1) however I
  do now have a parallel 8.3 system crunching the data, and it is showing
  the same symptom (yes, 2 8.3 servers, crunching the same data, both
  bogged down now), so I do feel this is something specific to 8.3.
 
  I am mostly wondering if anyone else has encountered behavior like this
  on 8.3 (large sets of insertupdate exception block in plpgsql bogging
  down), or if anyone has any thoughts on which direction I should poke at
  it from here. TIA.

 Perhaps what you could do is backpatch the change and see if the problem
 goes away.

So, after some more digging, we ended up backpatching the change. Results as 
follows:

= hanging job before patch

 elapsed | status
-+
 00:00:00.024075 | OK/starting with 2008-04-25 08:20:02
 00:00:00.611411 | OK/processing 624529 hits up until 2008-04-25 10:20:02
 03:48:02.748319 | ??/Processed 65000 aggregated rows so far
(3 rows)

= successful job after patch

 elapsed | status
-+-
 00:00:00.026809 | OK/starting with 2008-04-25 08:20:02
 00:00:03.921532 | OK/processing 2150115 hits up until 2008-04-25 15:00:02
 00:24:45.439081 | OK/Processed 334139 aggregated rows
 00:00:00.019433 | OK/
(4 rows)

Note the second run had to do all the rows from the first run, plus additional 
rows that accumulated while the first job was running. 

Oddly some dtrace profiling gave me this, which is pretty different, but 
certainly doesn't have concerns about TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId

snip
postgres`hash_search_with_hash_value  536   2.3%
postgres`SearchCatCache   538   2.3%
postgres`hash_seq_search  577   2.4%
postgres`MemoryContextAllocZeroAligned610   2.6%
postgres`_bt_compare  671   2.8%
libc.so.1`memcpy  671   2.8%
postgres`XLogInsert   755   3.2%
postgres`LockReassignCurrentOwner 757   3.2%
postgres`base_yyparse1174   5.0%
postgres`AllocSetAlloc   1244   5.3%

We still have one of our 8.3 servers running stock 8.3.1, so we'll see how 
long before this bites us again.  Would certainly be nice to get this fixed 
in the mainline code. 

-- 
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

-- 
Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance


Re: [PERFORM] Re: [HACKERS] [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Fix TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId() to use binary search

2008-04-25 Thread Tom Lane
Robert Treat [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 Oddly some dtrace profiling gave me this, which is pretty different, but 
 certainly doesn't have concerns about TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId

... which seems to pretty much destroy your thesis, no?

regards, tom lane

-- 
Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance


[PERFORM] Re: [HACKERS] [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Fix TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId() to use binary search

2008-04-21 Thread Robert Treat
On Thursday 27 March 2008 17:11, Tom Lane wrote:
 Robert Treat [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  On Sunday 16 March 2008 22:18, Tom Lane wrote:
 Fix TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId() to use binary 
 search instead 
 of linear search when checking child-transaction XIDs.
 
Are there any plans to backpatch this into REL8_3_STABLE?
  
No.
  
It looks like I am
hitting a pretty serious performance regression on 8.3 with a stored
procedure that grabs a pretty big recordset, and loops through doing
insertupdate on unique failures.  The procedure get progressivly
slower the more records involved... and dbx shows me stuck in
TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId().
  
   If you can convince me it's a regression I might reconsider, but I
   rather doubt that 8.2 was better,
   

  Well, I can't speak for 8.2, but I have a second system crunching the
  same data using the same function on 8.1 (on lesser hardware in fact),
  and it doesn't have these type of issues.

 If you can condense it to a test case that is worse on 8.3 than 8.1,
 I'm willing to listen...

I spent some time trying to come up with a test case, but had no luck.  Dtrace 
showed that the running process was calling this function rather excessively; 
sample profiling for 30 seconds would look like this: 

FUNCTIONCOUNT   PCNT
snip
postgres`LockBuffer10   0.0%
postgres`slot_deform_tuple 11   0.0%
postgres`ExecEvalScalarVar 11   0.0%
postgres`ExecMakeFunctionResultNoSets  13   0.0%
postgres`IndexNext 14   0.0%
postgres`slot_getattr  15   0.0%
postgres`LWLockRelease 20   0.0%
postgres`index_getnext 55   0.1%
postgres`TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId40074  99.4%

But I saw similar percentages on the 8.1 machine, so I am not convinced this 
is where the problem is.  Unfortunatly (in some respects) the problem went 
away up untill this morning, so I haven't been looking at it since the above 
exchange.  I'm still open to the idea that something inside 
TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId could have changed to make things worse 
(in addition to cpu, the process does consume a significant amount of 
memory... prstat shows:

 PID USERNAME  SIZE   RSS STATE  PRI NICE  TIME  CPU PROCESS/NLWP
 3844 postgres 1118M 1094M cpu3500   6:25:48  12% postgres/1

I do wonder if the number of rows being worked on is significant in some 
way... by looking in the job log for the running procedure (we use 
autonoumous logging in this function), I can see that it has a much larger 
number of rows to be processed, so perhaps there is simply a tipping point 
that is reached which causes it to stop performing... still it would be 
curious that I never saw this behavior on 8.1

= current job
 elapsed | status
-+
 00:00:00.042895 | OK/starting with 2008-04-21 03:20:03
 00:00:00.892663 | OK/processing 487291 hits up until 2008-04-21 05:20:03
 05:19:26.595508 | ??/Processed 7 aggregated rows so far
(3 rows)

= yesterdays run
| elapsed | status
+-+
| 00:00:00.680222 | OK/starting with 2008-04-20 04:20:02
| 00:00:00.409331 | OK/processing 242142 hits up until 2008-04-20 05:20:04
| 00:25:02.306736 | OK/Processed 35936 aggregated rows
| 00:00:00.141179 | OK/
(4 rows)

Unfortunatly I don't have the 8.1 system to bang on anymore for this, (though 
anecdotaly speaking, I never saw this behavior in 8.1) however I do now have 
a parallel 8.3 system crunching the data, and it is showing the same symptom 
(yes, 2 8.3 servers, crunching the same data, both bogged down now), so I do 
feel this is something specific to 8.3.  

I am mostly wondering if anyone else has encountered behavior like this on 8.3 
(large sets of insertupdate exception block in plpgsql bogging down), or 
if anyone has any thoughts on which direction I should poke at it from here. 
TIA.

-- 
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

-- 
Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance


Re: [PERFORM] Re: [HACKERS] [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Fix TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId() to use binary search

2008-04-21 Thread Alvaro Herrera
Robert Treat wrote:

 Unfortunatly I don't have the 8.1 system to bang on anymore for this, (though 
 anecdotaly speaking, I never saw this behavior in 8.1) however I do now have 
 a parallel 8.3 system crunching the data, and it is showing the same symptom 
 (yes, 2 8.3 servers, crunching the same data, both bogged down now), so I do 
 feel this is something specific to 8.3.  
 
 I am mostly wondering if anyone else has encountered behavior like this on 
 8.3 
 (large sets of insertupdate exception block in plpgsql bogging down), or 
 if anyone has any thoughts on which direction I should poke at it from here. 
 TIA.

Perhaps what you could do is backpatch the change and see if the problem
goes away.

-- 
Alvaro Herrerahttp://www.CommandPrompt.com/
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.

-- 
Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance