Re: [Pgsphere-dev] GIST index concurrency concern

Patrick,

you didn't say us about your setup. Have you proved you've seen
locking issue for reading ? Are you sure you have no any locks in
your code ? Any tests demonstrated your problem would be great.

Oleg
On Tue, 9 Nov 2004, Patrick Clery wrote:

> Oleg,
> Daniel and I have both been collaborating on this structure for a while now.
> We are aware that GiST reads work very fast. But won't they be "paralyzed"
> when there are writes? Both of us are working on dating sites, and the main
> problem that concerns us is a very heavy traffic load. At this point I am
> planning to queue all changes to a GiST index and commit them every 10-15
> minutes. Is that really necessary? It's realistic to assume here that if
> there is a problem with locking the table for writes, it will be a problem in
> this situation because this structure is going to be hit VERY hard (and
> Daniel's situation is on an even larger scale). We hope that we can alleviate
> that with a "transaction queue", but this is not a simple fix. Have you seen
> any projects that were under a heavy load using a GiST index, and were they
> able to avoid being "paralyzed" somehow?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Patrick
>
> On Tuesday 09 November 2004 22:08, Oleg Bartunov wrote:
>> Oleg Bartunov <oleg(at)sai(dot)msu(dot)su>
>
>> Daniel,
>>
>> concurrency is a big issue of current implementation of GiST.
>> But it should don't bite you for READ ops !
>> -hackers mailing list is a very relevant mailing list for GiST
>> discussions. It's pity we several times claimed to work on GiST
>> concurrency and recovery, but never got a chance :)
>> I see Neil become interested in GiST concurrency, though.
>>
>>
>> Oleg
>> On Tue, 9 Nov 2004, Daniel Ceregatti wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> It's recently come to my attention that GIST indices suffer from
>>> concurrency issues. I have already developed a dating sites using GIST
>>> for use with attributes using the intarray contrib, and for Earth
>>> distance/radius calculations using pg_sphere.
>>>
>>> I'm wondering if I haven't shot myself in the foot here. So far, I
>>> understand that a GIST index will be locked by a backend for any DML.
>>> Basically I'm concerned that my database will not scale in the manner
>>> that I was hoping, because the sites that access the database are to be
>>> used by many multiple concurrent users, doing some DML.
>>>
>>> I expect my site to sustain something around 1000-3000 new user
>>> acquisitions per day, all of which will account for an insert into 3
>>> GIST indices. Additionally there will be people that will be updating
>>> their attributes and locations as well, but this will probably only
>>> account for a small fraction of the DML. We don't allow people to delete
>>> stuff.
>>>
>>> My concern now is this concurrency issue. My question is: Is there
>>> anyone out there using a GIST index on a database where there's a lot of
>>> DML? Should I be concerned with this issue at all?
>>>
>>> If so, what can be done to minimize the impact of heavy DML on a GIST
>>> index? I've pondered rolling all DML into queues via triggers and then
>>> de-queuing them in one transaction every so often, like 15 minutes, via
>>> cron. Any other suggestions?
>>>
>>> I'm posting to this list because I understand that both Oleg and Teodor
>>> read it, and I found no other relevant list. If I've misposted, please
>>> accept my apology and please direct me to the appropriate list.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Daniel
>>>
>>
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Regards,
Oleg
_____________________________________________________________
Oleg Bartunov, sci.researcher, hostmaster of AstroNet,
Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow University (Russia)
Internet: oleg(at)sai(dot)msu(dot)su, http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/
phone: +007(095)939-16-83, +007(095)939-23-83