Re: pgsql functions and transactions?

Betsy Barker <betsy(dot)barker(at)supportservicesinc(dot)com> writes:
> I'm not touching a lot of different tables per se, but I have about 10
> functions that each process one or more cursor that all combined end
> up creating about 45,000 records. The functions cascade.

That doesn't in itself seem like it would require locking a lot of
different tables.

> And like I said, I get the error on my development box with 512 M of
> RAM. Production has 3 G of RAM.

Available RAM has nothing to do with this --- you are overflowing the
lock table in PG shared memory, which is sized according to
max_locks_per_transaction (times max_connections). So kicking up that
parameter should fix it. I'm just curious as to why you're overflowing
the default setting --- we don't see that happen all that often.

> Can I ask you what you mean by "are you touching a whole lot of
> different tables in one transaction? " Do I have a transaction?

Yes, you do --- if you're using JDBC then the driver's autocommit
setting determines how long the transaction lasts, but in any case
it will last at least as long as one SQL statement sent to the backend.
So a pile of nested functions will necessarily all execute in one
transaction. If that whole process involves accessing more than a
few hundred tables, you'll need to do something with
max_locks_per_transaction.

But if you're only accessing a few tables (say tens) then there's
something else going on here.

regards, tom lane