Re: Logical Replication - behavior of ALTER PUBLICATION .. DROP TABLE and ALTER SUBSCRIPTION .. REFRESH PUBLICATION

On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 11:08 AM Bharath Rupireddy
<bharath(dot)rupireddyforpostgres(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 10:33 AM Amit Kapila <amit(dot)kapila16(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 5:23 PM japin <japinli(at)hotmail(dot)com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Tue, 12 Jan 2021 at 19:32, Bharath Rupireddy wrote:
> > > > On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 4:47 PM Li Japin <japinli(at)hotmail(dot)com> wrote:
> > > >> IIUC the logical replication only replicate the tables in publication, I think
> > > >> when the tables that aren't in publication should not be replicated.
> > > >>
> > > >> Attached the patch that fixes it. Thought?
> > > >
> > > > With that change, we don't get the behaviour that's stated in the
> > > > document - "The ADD TABLE and DROP TABLE clauses will add and remove
> > > > one or more tables from the publication. Note that adding tables to a
> > > > publication that is already subscribed to will require a ALTER
> > > > SUBSCRIPTION ... REFRESH PUBLICATION action on the subscribing side in
> > > > order to become effective" -
> > > > https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/sql-alterpublication.html.
> > > >
> > >
> > > The documentation only emphasize adding tables to a publication, not
> > > include dropping tables from a publication.
> > >
> >
> > Right and I think that is ensured by the subscriber by calling
> > should_apply_changes_for_rel() which won't return true unless the
> > newly added relation is not synced via Refresh Publication. So, this
> > means with or without this patch we should be sending the changes of
> > the newly published table from the publisher?
>
> Oh, my bad, alter subscription...refresh publication is required only when the tables are added to the publisher. Patch by japin makes the walsender process to stop sending the data to the subscriber/apply worker. The patch is based on the idea of looking at the PUBLICATIONRELMAP in get_rel_sync_entry when the entries have been invalidated in rel_sync_cache_publication_cb because of alter publication...drop table.
> ,
> When the alter subscription...refresh publication is run on the subscriber, the SUBSCRIPTIONRELMAP catalogue gets invalidated but the corresponding cache entries in the LogicalRepRelMap which is used by logicalrep_rel_open are not invalidated. LogicalRepRelMap is used to know the relations that are associated with the subscription. But we seem to have not taken care of invalidating those entries, though we have the invalidation callback invalidate_syncing_table_states registered for SUBSCRIPTIONRELMAP in ApplyWorkerMain. So, we miss to work on updating the entries in LogicalRepRelMap.
>
> IMO, the ideal way to fix this issue is 1) stop the walsender sending the changes to dropped tables, for this japin patch works 2) we must mark all the LogicalRepRelMap entries as invalid in invalidate_syncing_table_states so that in the next logicalrep_rel_open, if the entry is invalidated, then we have to call GetSubscriptionRelState to get the latest state, as shown in [1]. Likewise, we might also have to mark the cache entries invalid in subscription_change_cb which is invalidation callback for pg_subscription
>

Is the second point you described here is related to the original
bug-reported or will it cause some other problem?

> Thoughts?
>
> [1] -
> if (entry->state != SUBREL_STATE_READY || entry->invalid)
> entry->state = GetSubscriptionRelState(MySubscription->oid,
> entry->localreloid,
> &entry->statelsn);
>
> if (entry->invalid)
> entry->invalid = false;
>
> return entry;
>
> > I have another question on your patch which is why in some cases like
> > when we have not inserted in step-5 (as mentioned by you) the
> > following insertions are not sent. Is somehow we are setting the
> > pubactions as false in that case, if so, how?
>
> The reason is that the issue reported in this thread occurs - when we have the walsender process running, RelationSyncCache is initialized, we inserted some data into the table that's sent to the subscriber and the table is dropped, we miss to set the pubactions to false in get_rel_sync_entry, though the cache entries have been invalidated.
>
> In some cases, it works properly because the old walsender process was stopped and when a new walsender is started, then the cache RelationSyncCache gets initialized again and the pubactions will be set to false in get_rel_sync_entry.
>

Why is walsender process was getting stopped in one case but not in another?

--
With Regards,
Amit Kapila.