Re: preserving db/ts/relfilenode OIDs across pg_upgrade (was Re: storing an explicit nonce)

On Wed, Sep 22, 2021 at 3:07 PM Shruthi Gowda <gowdashru(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> > - The comment in binary_upgrade_set_pg_class_oids() is still not
> > accurate. You removed the sentence which says "Indexes cannot have
> > toast tables, so we need not make this probe in the index code path"
> > but the immediately preceding sentence is still inaccurate in at least
> > two ways. First, it only talks about tables, but the code now applies
> > to indexes. Second, it only talks about OIDs, but now also deals with
> > refilenodes. It's really important to fully update every comment that
> > might be affected by your changes!
>
> The comment is updated.

Looks good.

> The SQL query will not result in duplicate rows because the first join
> filters the duplicate rows if any with the on clause ' i.indisvalid'
> on it. The result of the first join is further left joined with pg_class and
> pg_class will not have duplicate rows for a given oid.

Oh, you're right. My mistake.

> As per your suggestion, reloid and relfilenode are absorbed in the same place.
> An additional parameter called 'suppress_storage' is passed to heap_create()
> which indicates whether or not to create the storage when the caller
> passed a valid relfilenode.

I find it confusing to have both suppress_storage and create_storage
with one basically as the negation of the other. To avoid that sort of
thing I generally have a policy that variables and options should say
whether something should happen, rather than whether it should be
prevented from happening. Sometimes there are good reasons - such as
strong existing precedent - to deviate from this practice but I think
it's good to follow when possible. So my proposal is to always have
create_storage and never suppress_storage, and if some function needs
to adjust the value of create_storage that was passed to it then OK.

> I did not make the changes to set the oid and relfilenode in the same call.
> I feel the uniformity w.r.t the other function signatures in
> pg_upgrade_support.c will be lost because currently each function sets
> only one attribute.
> Also, renaming the applicable function names to represent that they
> set both oid and relfilenode will make the function name even longer.
> We may opt to not include the relfilenode in the function name instead
> use a generic name like binary_upgrade_set_next_xxx_pg_class_oid() but
> then
> we will end up with some functions that set two attributes and some
> functions that set one attribute.

OK.

> I have also attached the patch to preserve the DB oid. As discussed,
> template0 will be created with a fixed oid during initdb. I am using
> OID 2 for template0. Even though oid 2 is already in use for the
> 'pg_am' catalog I see no harm in using it for template0 DB because oid
> doesn’t have to be unique across the database - it has to be unique
> for the particular catalog table. Kindly let me know if I am missing
> something?
> Apparently, if we did decide to pick an unused oid for template0 then
> I see a challenge in removing that oid from the unused oid list. I
> could not come up with a feasible solution for handling it.

You are correct that there is no intrinsic reason why the same OID
can't be used in various different catalogs. We have a policy of not
doing that, though; I'm not clear on the reason. Maybe it'd be OK to
deviate from that policy here, but another option would be to simply
change the unused_oids script (and maybe some of the others). It
already has:

my $FirstGenbkiObjectId =
Catalog::FindDefinedSymbol('access/transam.h', '..', 'FirstGenbkiObjectId');
push @{$oids}, $FirstGenbkiObjectId;

Presumably it could be easily adapted to push the value of some other
defined symbol into @{$oids} also, thus making that OID in effect
used.

--
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com