Re: Does setval(nextval()+N) generate unique blocks of IDs?

On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 2:03 PM, Scott Marlowe <scott(dot)marlowe(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 9:32 AM, Craig James <cjames(at)emolecules(dot)com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 5:10 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>>> Craig James <cjames(at)emolecules(dot)com> writes:
>>>> I want to do this:
>>>
>>>> select setval('object_id_seq', nextval('object_id_seq') + 1000, false);
>>>
>>>> Now suppose two processes do this simultaneously. Maybe they're in
>>>> transactions, maybe they're not. Are they guaranteed to get distinct
>>>> blocks of IDs?
>>>
>>> No, because the setval and the nextval are not indivisible.
>>>
>>>> Or is it possible that each will execute nextval() and
>>>> get N and N+1 respectively, and then do setval() to N+1000 and N+1001,
>>>> resulting in two overlapping blocks.
>>>
>>> Exactly.
>>>
>>>> If the answer is, "This won't work," then what's a better way to do this?
>>>
>>> AFAIK the only way at the moment is
>>>
>>> * acquire some advisory lock that by convention you use for this sequence
>>> * advance the sequence
>>> * release advisory lock
>>>
>>> There have been previous discussions of this type of problem, eg
>>> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2011-09/msg01031.php
>>> but the topic doesn't seem to have come up quite often enough to
>>> motivate anybody to do anything about it. Your particular case could be
>>> handled by a variant of nextval() with a number-of-times-to-advance
>>> argument, but I'm not sure if that's enough for other scenarios.
>>>
>>> regards, tom lane
>>
>> So here's what I came up with. I'm no PLPGSQL guru, but it seemed
>> pretty straightforward.
>>
>> create or replace function nextval_block(bsize integer default 1)
>> returns bigint as $nextval_block$
>> declare
>> bstart bigint;
>> begin
>> perform pg_advisory_lock(1);
>> select into bstart nextval('my_seq');
>> perform setval('my_seq', bstart + bsize, false);
>> perform pg_advisory_unlock(1);
>> return bstart;
>> end;
>> $nextval_block$ language plpgsql;
>
> That seems unnecessarily complex. how about this:
>
> create sequence s;
> select array_agg (a.b) from (select nextval('s') as b from
> generate_series(1,1000)) as a;
>
> Then you just iterate that array for the ids you need.

If you want it in a comma delimited formate:

select array_to_string(array_agg (a.b),',') from (select nextval('s')
as b from generate_series(1,1000)) as a;