Re: BUG #18014: Releasing catcache entries makes schema_to_xmlschema() fail when parallel workers are used

Hello Horiguchi-san,

20.07.2023 11:29, Kyotaro Horiguchi wrote:
> At Thu, 20 Jul 2023 16:44:59 +0900 (JST), Kyotaro Horiguchi <horikyota(dot)ntt(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote in
>> Stupid. What we should do here would be ensuring the funtion doesn't
>> invoke parallel workers, maybe.
> So, for testing, I didn't see the error with applying the attached patch.
> There are other SPI calls but I didn't see them at all.
>

Thank you for looking into it!

I think that we need to determine the level where the problem that should
be fixed is:
1) test xmlmap fails sporadically due to the catalog changes caused by
 parallel tests activity
2) schema_to_xmlschemaX() can fail when parallel workers are used
3) has_table_privilegeX() can fail sporadically when executed within a
 parallel worker
4) SearchSysCacheX(RELOID, ...) can switch to a newer catalog snapshot,
 when repeated in a parallel worker

The patch proposed fixes the issue on level 2, but that error still can be
seen on level 3. For example, you can replace
SELECT schema_to_xmlschema('testxmlschema_$c', true, false, '');
in the above script with
SELECT oid FROM pg_catalog.pg_class WHERE relnamespace = 1 AND relkind IN ('r', 'm', 'v') AND
pg_catalog.has_table_privilege (oid, 'SELECT');

Probably, similar errors can also occur with
"SELECT * FROM information_schema.tables" or with other
information_schema views, that call has_table_privilege().

But if it's okey to have sporadic errors on lower levels, then may be just
fix the issue on level 1. Please look at the patch attached, that makes
schema_get_xml_visible_tables(Oid nspid) isolated from changes in other
namespaces.

Best regards,
Alexander