Re: Improving connection scalability: GetSnapshotData()

On 4/7/20 8:15 AM, Andres Freund wrote:

> I think this is pretty close to being committable.
>
>
> But: This patch came in very late for v13, and it took me much longer to
> polish it up than I had hoped (partially distraction due to various bugs
> I found (in particular snapshot_too_old), partially covid19, partially
> "hell if I know"). The patchset touches core parts of the system. While
> both Thomas and David have done some review, they haven't for the latest
> version (mea culpa).
>
> In many other instances I would say that the above suggests slipping to
> v14, given the timing.
>
> The main reason I am considering pushing is that I think this patcheset
> addresses one of the most common critiques of postgres, as well as very
> common, hard to fix, real-world production issues. GetSnapshotData() has
> been a major bottleneck for about as long as I have been using postgres,
> and this addresses that to a significant degree.
>
> A second reason I am considering it is that, in my opinion, the changes
> are not all that complicated and not even that large. At least not for a
> change to a problem that we've long tried to improve.

Even as recently as earlier this week there was a blog post making the
rounds about the pain points running PostgreSQL with many simultaneous
connections. Anything to help with that would go a long way, and looking
at the benchmarks you ran (at least with a quick, nonthorough glance)
this could and should be very positively impactful to a *lot* of
PostgreSQL users.

I can't comment on the "close to committable" aspect (at least not with
an informed, confident opinion) but if it is indeed close to committable
and you can put the work to finish polishing (read: "bug fixing" :-) and
we have a plan both of testing and, if need be, to revert, I would be
okay with including it, for whatever my vote is worth. Is the timing /
situation ideal? No, but the way you describe it, it sounds like there
is enough that can be done to ensure it's ready for Beta 1.

From a RMT standpoint, perhaps this is one of the "Recheck at Mid-Beta"
items, as well.

Thanks,

Jonathan