RE: Perform streaming logical transactions by background workers and parallel apply

On Monday, November 7, 2022 6:18 PM Masahiko Sawada <sawada(dot)mshk(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Nov 3, 2022 at 10:06 PM houzj(dot)fnst(at)fujitsu(dot)com
> <houzj(dot)fnst(at)fujitsu(dot)com> wrote:
> >
> > On Wednesday, November 2, 2022 10:50 AM Masahiko Sawada
> <sawada(dot)mshk(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Mon, Oct 24, 2022 at 8:42 PM Masahiko Sawada
> > > <sawada(dot)mshk(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > On Wed, Oct 12, 2022 at 3:04 PM Amit Kapila
> <amit(dot)kapila16(at)gmail(dot)com>
> > > wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > On Tue, Oct 11, 2022 at 5:52 AM Masahiko Sawada
> > > <sawada(dot)mshk(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > On Fri, Oct 7, 2022 at 2:00 PM Amit Kapila
> <amit(dot)kapila16(at)gmail(dot)com>
> > > wrote:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > About your point that having different partition structures for
> > > > > > > publisher and subscriber, I don't know how common it will be once
> we
> > > > > > > have DDL replication. Also, the default value of
> > > > > > > publish_via_partition_root is false which doesn't seem to indicate
> > > > > > > that this is a quite common case.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > So how can we consider these concurrent issues that could happen
> only
> > > > > > when streaming = 'parallel'? Can we restrict some use cases to avoid
> > > > > > the problem or can we have a safeguard against these conflicts?
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Yeah, right now the strategy is to disallow parallel apply for such
> > > > > cases as you can see in *0003* patch.
> > > >
> > > > Tightening the restrictions could work in some cases but there might
> > > > still be coner cases and it could reduce the usability. I'm not really
> > > > sure that we can ensure such a deadlock won't happen with the current
> > > > restrictions. I think we need something safeguard just in case. For
> > > > example, if the leader apply worker is waiting for a lock acquired by
> > > > its parallel worker, it cancels the parallel worker's transaction,
> > > > commits its transaction, and restarts logical replication. Or the
> > > > leader can log the deadlock to let the user know.
> > > >
> > >
> > > As another direction, we could make the parallel apply feature robust
> > > if we can detect deadlocks that happen among the leader worker and
> > > parallel workers. I'd like to summarize the idea discussed off-list
> > > (with Amit, Hou-San, and Kuroda-San) for discussion. The basic idea is
> > > that when the leader worker or parallel worker needs to wait for
> > > something (eg. transaction completion, messages) we use lmgr
> > > functionality so that we can create wait-for edges and detect
> > > deadlocks in lmgr.
> > >
> > > For example, a scenario where a deadlock occurs is the following:
> > >
> > > [Publisher]
> > > create table tab1(a int);
> > > create publication pub for table tab1;
> > >
> > > [Subcriber]
> > > creat table tab1(a int primary key);
> > > create subscription sub connection 'port=10000 dbname=postgres'
> > > publication pub with (streaming = parallel);
> > >
> > > TX1:
> > > BEGIN;
> > > INSERT INTO tab1 SELECT i FROM generate_series(1, 5000) s(i); -- streamed
> > > Tx2:
> > > BEGIN;
> > > INSERT INTO tab1 SELECT i FROM generate_series(1, 5000) s(i); --
> streamed
> > > COMMIT;
> > > COMMIT;
> > >
> > > Suppose a parallel apply worker (PA-1) is executing TX-1 and the
> > > leader apply worker (LA) is executing TX-2 concurrently on the
> > > subscriber. Now, LA is waiting for PA-1 because of the unique key of
> > > tab1 while PA-1 is waiting for LA to send further messages. There is a
> > > deadlock between PA-1 and LA but lmgr cannot detect it.
> > >
> > > One idea to resolve this issue is that we have LA acquire a session
> > > lock on a shared object (by LockSharedObjectForSession()) and have
> > > PA-1 wait on the lock before trying to receive messages. IOW, LA
> > > acquires the lock before sending STREAM_STOP and releases it if
> > > already acquired before sending STREAM_START, STREAM_PREPARE and
> > > STREAM_COMMIT. For PA-1, it always needs to acquire the lock after
> > > processing STREAM_STOP and then release immediately after acquiring
> > > it. That way, when PA-1 is waiting for LA, we can have a wait-edge
> > > from PA-1 to LA in lmgr, which will make a deadlock in lmgr like:
> > >
> > > LA (waiting to acquire lock) -> PA-1 (waiting to acquire the shared
> > > object) -> LA
> > >
> > > We would need the shared objects per parallel apply worker.
> > >
> > > After detecting a deadlock, we can restart logical replication with
> > > temporarily disabling the parallel apply, which is done by 0005 patch.
> > >
> > > Another scenario is similar to the previous case but TX-1 and TX-2 are
> > > executed by two parallel apply workers (PA-1 and PA-2 respectively).
> > > In this scenario, PA-2 is waiting for PA-1 to complete its transaction
> > > while PA-1 is waiting for subsequent input from LA. Also, LA is
> > > waiting for PA-2 to complete its transaction in order to preserve the
> > > commit order. There is a deadlock among three processes but it cannot
> > > be detected in lmgr because the fact that LA is waiting for PA-2 to
> > > complete its transaction doesn't appear in lmgr (see
> > > parallel_apply_wait_for_xact_finish()). To fix it, we can use
> > > XactLockTableWait() instead.
> > >
> > > However, since XactLockTableWait() considers PREPARED TRANSACTION
> as
> > > still in progress, probably we need a similar trick as above in case
> > > where a transaction is prepared. For example, suppose that TX-2 was
> > > prepared instead of committed in the above scenario, PA-2 acquires
> > > another shared lock at START_STREAM and releases it at
> > > STREAM_COMMIT/PREPARE. LA can wait on the lock.
> > >
> > > Yet another scenario where LA has to wait is the case where the shm_mq
> > > buffer is full. In the above scenario (ie. PA-1 and PA-2 are executing
> > > transactions concurrently), if the shm_mq buffer between LA and PA-2
> > > is full, LA has to wait to send messages, and this wait doesn't appear
> > > in lmgr. To fix it, probably we have to use non-blocking write and
> > > wait with a timeout. If timeout is exceeded, the LA will write to file
> > > and indicate PA-2 that it needs to read file for remaining messages.
> > > Then LA will start waiting for commit which will detect deadlock if
> > > any.
> > >
> > > If we can detect deadlocks by having such a functionality or some
> > > other way then we don't need to tighten the restrictions of subscribed
> > > tables' schemas etc.
> >
> > Thanks for the analysis and summary !
> >
> > I tried to implement the above idea and here is the patch set. I have done
> some
> > basic tests for the new codes and it work fine.
>
> Thank you for updating the patches!
>
> Here are comments on v42-0001:
>
> We have the following three similar name functions regarding to
> starting a new parallel apply worker:
> ---
> /*
> * Exit if any parameter that affects the remote connection
> was changed.
> - * The launcher will start a new worker.
> + * The launcher will start a new worker, but note that the
> parallel apply
> + * worker may or may not restart depending on the value of
> the streaming
> + * option and whether there will be a streaming transaction.
>
> In which case does the parallel apply worker don't restart even if the
> streaming option has been changed?

Sorry, I forgot to reply to this comment. If user change the streaming option from
'parallel' to 'on' or 'off', the parallel apply workers won't be restarted.

Best regards,
Hou zj