Re: UPDATE of partition key

On 13 February 2017 at 12:01, Amit Khandekar <amitdkhan(dot)pg(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> There are a few things that can be discussed about :

If you do a normal update the new tuple is linked to the old one using
the ctid forming a chain of tuple versions. This tuple movement breaks
that chain. So the question I had reading this proposal is what
behaviour depends on ctid and how is it affected by the ctid chain
being broken.

I think the concurrent update case is just a symptom of this. If you
try to update a row that's locked for a concurrent update you normally
wait until the concurrent update finishes, then follow the ctid chain
and recheck the where clause on the target of the link and if it still
matches you perform the update there.

At least you do that if you have isolation_level set to
repeatable_read. If you have isolation level set to serializable then
you just fail with a serialization failure. I think that's what you
should do if you come across a row that's been updated with a broken
ctid chain even in repeatable read mode. Just fail with a
serialization failure and document that in partitioned tables if you
perform updates that move tuples between partitions then you need to
be ensure your updates are prepared for serialization failures.

I think this would require another bit in the tuple info mask
indicating that this is tuple is the last version before a broken ctid
chain -- i.e. that it was updated by moving it to another partition.
Maybe there's some combination of bits you could use though since this
is only needed in a particular situation.

Offhand I don't know what other behaviours are dependent on the ctid
chain. I think you need to go search the docs -- and probably the code
just to be sure -- for any references to ctid to ensure you catch
every impact of breaking the ctid chain.

--
greg