Re: pg_stat_bgwriter.buffers_backend is pretty meaningless (and more?)

On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 07:15:59PM -0600, Justin Pryzby wrote:
> There's extraneous blank lines in these functions:
>
> +pgstat_sum_io_path_ops
> +pgstat_report_live_backend_io_path_ops
> +pgstat_recv_resetsharedcounter
> +GetIOPathDesc
> +StrategyRejectBuffer

+ an extra blank line pgstat_reset_shared_counters.

In 0005:

monitoring.sgml says that the columns in pg_stat_buffers are integers, but
they're actually bigint.

+ tupstore = tuplestore_begin_heap(true, false, work_mem);

You're passing a constant randomAccess=true to tuplestore_begin_heap ;)

+Datum all_values[NROWS][COLUMN_LENGTH];

If you were to allocate this as an array, I think it could actually be 3-D:
Datum all_values[BACKEND_NUM_TYPES-1][IOPATH_NUM_TYPES][COLUMN_LENGTH];

But I don't know if this is portable across postgres' supported platforms; I
haven't seen any place which allocates a multidimensional array on the stack,
nor passes one to a function:

+static inline Datum *
+get_pg_stat_buffers_row(Datum all_values[NROWS][COLUMN_LENGTH], BackendType backend_type, IOPath io_path)

Maybe the allocation half is okay (I think it's ~3kB), but it seems easier to
palloc the required amount than to research compiler behavior.

That function is only used as a one-line helper, and doesn't use
multidimensional array access anyway:

+ return all_values[(backend_type - 1) * IOPATH_NUM_TYPES + io_path];

I think it'd be better as a macro, like (I think)
#define ROW(backend_type, io_path) all_values[NROWS*(backend_type-1)+io_path]

Maybe it should take the column type as a 3 arg.

The enum with COLUMN_LENGTH should be named.

Or maybe it should be removed, and the enum names moved to comments, like:

+ /* backend_type */
+ values[val++] = backend_type_desc;

+ /* io_path */
+ values[val++] = CStringGetTextDatum(GetIOPathDesc(io_path));

+ /* allocs */
+ values[val++] += io_ops->allocs - resets->allocs;
...

*Note the use of += and not =.

Also:
src/include/miscadmin.h:#define BACKEND_NUM_TYPES (B_LOGGER + 1)

I think it's wrong to say NUM_TYPES = B_LOGGER + 1 (which would suggest using
lessthan-or-equal instead of lessthan as you are).

Since the valid backend types start at 1 , the "count" of backend types is
currently B_LOGGER (13) - not 14. I think you should remove the "+1" here.
Then NROWS (if it continued to exist at all) wouldn't need to subtract one.

--
Justin