• Tom Lane's avatar
    Improve ANALYZE's handling of concurrent-update scenarios. · 7170268e
    Tom Lane authored
    This patch changes the rule for whether or not a tuple seen by ANALYZE
    should be included in its sample.
    
    When we last touched this logic, in commit 51e1445f, we weren't
    thinking very hard about tuples being UPDATEd by a long-running
    concurrent transaction.  In such a case, we might see the pre-image as
    either LIVE or DELETE_IN_PROGRESS depending on timing; and we might see
    the post-image not at all, or as INSERT_IN_PROGRESS.  Since the existing
    code will not sample either DELETE_IN_PROGRESS or INSERT_IN_PROGRESS
    tuples, this leads to concurrently-updated rows being omitted from the
    sample entirely.  That's not very helpful, and it's especially the wrong
    thing if the concurrent transaction ends up rolling back.
    
    The right thing seems to be to sample DELETE_IN_PROGRESS rows just as if
    they were live.  This makes the "sample it" and "count it" decisions the
    same, which seems good for consistency.  It's clearly the right thing
    if the concurrent transaction ends up rolling back; in effect, we are
    sampling as though IN_PROGRESS transactions haven't happened yet.
    Also, this combination of choices ensures maximum robustness against
    the different combinations of whether and in which state we might see the
    pre- and post-images of an update.
    
    It's slightly annoying that we end up recording immediately-out-of-date
    stats in the case where the transaction does commit, but on the other
    hand the stats are fine for columns that didn't change in the update.
    And the alternative of sampling INSERT_IN_PROGRESS rows instead seems
    like a bad idea, because then the sampling would be inconsistent with
    the way rows are counted for the stats report.
    
    Per report from Mark Chambers; thanks to Jeff Janes for diagnosing
    what was happening.  Back-patch to all supported versions.
    
    Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAFh58O_Myr6G3tcH3gcGrF-=OExB08PJdWZcSBcEcovaiPsrHA@mail.gmail.com
    7170268e
analyze.c 88 KB