Re: Re: new patch of MERGE (merge_204) & a question about duplicated ctid

On 03.01.2011 11:37, Simon Riggs wrote:
> On Mon, 2011-01-03 at 01:53 -0500, Greg Smith wrote:
>
>> In advance of the planned but not available yet ability to
>> lock individual index key values, locking the whole table is the only
>> possible implementation that can work correctly here I'm aware of.
>
> This was discussed here
> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2010-10/msg01903.php
> with suggested resolutions for this release here
> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2010-10/msg01907.php
>
> In summary, that means we can either
>
> 1. Lock the table for ShareRowExclusiveLock
>
> 2. throw a SERIALIZABLE error, if we come up against a row that cannot
> be neither MATCHED nor NON MATCHED.
>
> 3. Bounce the patch to 9.2, commit early and then work on a full
> concurrency solution before commit. The solution strawman is something
> like EvalPlanQual with a new snapshot for each re-checked row, emulating
> the pattern of snapshots/rechecks that would happen in a PL/pgSQL
> version of an UPSERT.
>
> Either way, we're saying that MERGE will not support concurrent
> operations safely, in this release.
>
> Given the continued lack of test cases for this patch, and the possible
> embarrassment over not doing concurrent actions, do we think (3) is the
> right road?

This patch has never tried to implement concurrency-safe upsert. It
implements the MERGE command as specified by the SQL standard, nothing
more, nothing less. Let's not move the goalposts. Googling around, at
least MS SQL Server's MERGE command is the same
(http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/dang/archive/2009/01/31/UPSERT-Race-Condition-With-MERGE.aspx).
There is nothing embarrassing about it, we just have to document it clearly.

--
Heikki Linnakangas
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com