Re: Hot standby and GiST page splits (was Re: WIP: Fast GiST index build)

On 01.08.2011 13:44, Heikki Linnakangas wrote:
> On 01.08.2011 13:13, Simon Riggs wrote:
>> Did you want me to write the patch for 9.0?
>
> I'm looking at it now.

So, in 9.0, we currently leave the rightlink and NSN invalid when
replaying a page split. To set them correctly, we'd need the old
rightlink and NSN from the page being split, but the WAL record doesn't
currently include them. I can see two solutions to this:

1. Add them to the page split WAL record. That's straightforward, but
breaks WAL format compatibility with older minor versions.

2. Read the old page version, and copy the rightlink and NSN from there.
Since we're restoring what's basically a full-page image of the page
after the split, in crash recovery the old contents might be a torn
page, or a newer version of the page. I believe that's harmless, because
we only care about the NSN and rightlink in hot standby mode, but it's a
bit ugly.

If we change the WAL record, we have to make it so that the new version
can still read the old format, which complicates the implementation a
bit. Neverthelss, I'm leaning towards option 1.

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