Problem with pg_try_advisory_lock and two connections (seemingly) getting the same lock

From: Brett Hoerner <bretthoerner(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Problem with pg_try_advisory_lock and two connections (seemingly) getting the same lock
Date: 2010-07-20 23:27:46
Message-ID: AANLkTil6prYH5HmaFA7v5VuG8nJyXduRHRt-UB1ZBFq-@mail.gmail.com
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Hi,

I currently have a simple queue written ontop of Postgres. Jobs are
inserted and workers periodically check for jobs they can do, do them,
and then delete the rows. pg_try_advisory_lock is used to (attempt
to) stop two workers from doing the same job.

(I'm working on moving to a "real" messaging queue right now, this is
more a point of curiosity and education now.)

Here is my queue table,

CREATE TABLE queue (
id serial NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
rcvd timestamp with time zone,
sent timestamp with time zone,
host character varying(32),
job character varying(32),
arg text
);

Here is an example query,

SELECT q.*
FROM (SELECT id, job, arg
FROM queue
WHERE job = 'foo' OR job = 'bar'
OFFSET 0) AS q
WHERE pg_try_advisory_lock(1, q.id)
LIMIT 10

(For information on OFFSET 0 see:
http://blog.endpoint.com/2009/04/offset-0-ftw.html)

Now if I have two workers running I will periodically see that each
worker gets a row with the same q.id (and thus does the work). How is
that possible? The outer query seemingly does a WHERE on an
advisory_lock.

Does anyone have any ideas? Am I grossly misusing advisory_locks?

Thanks,
Brett

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