Re: Handle infinite recursion in logical replication setup

On Tue, Mar 1, 2022 at 4:12 PM kuroda(dot)hayato(at)fujitsu(dot)com
<kuroda(dot)hayato(at)fujitsu(dot)com> wrote:
>
> Hi Vignesh,
>
> > In logical replication, currently Walsender sends the data that is
> > generated locally and the data that are replicated from other
> > instances. This results in infinite recursion in circular logical
> > replication setup.
>
> Thank you for good explanation. I understand that this fix can be used
> for a bidirectional replication.

Once these issues are resolved, it can be used for bi-directional
logical replication.

> > Here there are two problems for the user: a) incremental
> > synchronization of table sending both local data and replicated data
> > by walsender b) Table synchronization of table using copy command
> > sending both local data and replicated data
>
> So you wanted to solve these two problem and currently focused on
> the first one, right? We can check one by one.

Yes.

> > For the first problem "Incremental synchronization of table by
> > Walsender" can be solved by:
> > Currently the locally generated data does not have replication origin
> > associated and the data that has originated from another instance will
> > have a replication origin associated. We could use this information to
> > differentiate locally generated data and replicated data and send only
> > the locally generated data. This "only_local" could be provided as an
> > option while subscription is created:
> > ex: CREATE SUBSCRIPTION sub1 CONNECTION 'dbname =postgres port=5433'
> > PUBLICATION pub1 with (only_local = on);
>
> Sounds good, but I cannot distinguish whether the assumption will keep.

Replication origin is created by the apply worker and it will be used
for all the transactions received from the walsender. I feel the
replication origin will be present always.

> I played with your patch, but it could not be applied to current master.
> I tested from bd74c40 and I confirmed infinite loop was not appeared.

I will post an updated version for this soon.

> local_only could not be set from ALTER SUBSCRIPTION command.
> Is it expected?

I wanted to get the opinion from others too just to make sure the
approach is right. I will fix this including the documentation, test,
etc in the later versions.

Regards,
Vignesh