Re: pg_upgrade: convert on read is dead end

Heikki Linnakangas napsal(a):
> Zdenek Kotala wrote:
>> PostgreSQL stores all table's external data in one TOAST table and
>> stored data does not contains any clue about datatype. When postgreSQL
>> reads TOSTEed value then there is not possible detect what type it is
>> and perform varlena conversion on composite datatypes or arrays.
>>
>> It could be converted in detoast_datum function but it means that
>> datum have to be retoasted and store back on new pages. The old page
>> MUST keep in old format because any page conversion lost information
>> about version and different datatypes can be store on one page PosgreSQL.
>
> Hmm. There's two things here:
> 1. The format of the toast page, and the toast chunk tuples.
> 2. The format of the toasted tuple, stored within the chunk tuples.
>
> The format of the toast page and the varlena headers of the byteas in
> the toast tuples could be converted when the page is read in, as usual.

Convert page and chunk varlena header is not problem. It works. You can get into
trouble when new max chunk size is smaller, but it is not current case.

> The format of the toasted tuple within the chunks is indeed trickier.
> Retoasting all tuples on the "master" heap page when the page is read in
> is probably simplest, as you say. But they don't necessarily need to be
> stored on new pages, any toast pages will do, because we keep track of
> 1. separately.

You can store it on any page in the new format with enough free space, but in
reality it will be mostly new page. You cannot convert old page, because it
could contain chunk from different tuple. You could check it and converted it
only if all chunk are related to one datum, but in general you need to have
mechanism how solve problem with multi datum chunks.

>> By my opinion, this issue completely kill convert on read solution and
>> only "read all formats..." solution is right one.
>
> It is quite heavy-weight, I agree, but doesn't "completely kill" the
> idea in my opinion.
>
> Besides, the "read all formats" approach wouldn't really avoid it
> either. If you passed a toasted datum to a function, when the function
> needs to detoast it, detoast_datum still wouldn't know whether the datum
> is in old or new format. You'd still need to detoast all values in the
> tuple somewhere before they could be passed around.

If you look into pg_upgrade prototype patch I added page version information
into HeapTupleData structure. It keeps information about format. All chunked
data are stored on a pages with same page versions. I think these two things are
enough to have all necessary information.

Zdenek

--
Zdenek Kotala Sun Microsystems
Prague, Czech Republic http://sun.com/postgresql