Re: Do we need so many hint bits?

On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 8:58 AM, Andres Freund <andres(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
> On 2012-11-16 08:43:12 -0600, Merlin Moncure wrote:
>> On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 9:21 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>> > Jeff Davis <pgsql(at)j-davis(dot)com> writes:
>> >> It occurred to me recently that many of the hint bits aren't terribly
>> >> important (at least it's not obvious to me). HEAP_XMIN_COMMITTED clearly
>> >> has a purpose, and we'd expect it to be used many times following the
>> >> initial CLOG lookup.
>> >
>> > Right.
>> >
>> >> But the other tuple hint bits seem to be there just for symmetry,
>> >> because they shouldn't last long. If HEAP_XMIN_INVALID or
>> >> HEAP_XMAX_COMMITTED is set, then it's (hopefully) going to be vacuumed
>> >> soon, and gone completely. And if HEAP_XMAX_INVALID is set, then it
>> >> should just be changed to InvalidTransactionId.
>> >
>> > Hm. It is not cheaper to change xmax to 0 than it is to set the hint
>> > bit --- you still need a write, and there are also added locking and
>> > atomicity worries --- so I'm not convinced by your argument there.
>> > But you might be right that the expected number of wins from the other
>> > two bits is a lot less.
>>
>> Is that true in a post checksum world though? Given that we are
>> logging changes can we relax atomicity expectations? IIRC xmin/xmax
>> are aligned, how come you can't just set InvalidTransactionId for
>> INVALID and 'FrozenTransactionId' for COMMITTED? Why can't you do
>> this now?
>
> Uhm. The latter doesn't really work if you have any transactions that
> might not see that row or am I missing something?

nope. you're right.

merlin