RE: Disable WAL logging to speed up data loading

Hi

On Thursday, October 29, 2020 11:42 AM Fujii Masao <masao(dot)fujii(at)oss(dot)nttdata(dot)com> wrote:
> BTW, with the patch, I observed that PREPARE TRANSACTION and COMMIT
> PREPARED caused assertion failure in my env, as I pointed upthread.
>
> How does the patch handle other feature depending on the existence of WAL,
> e.g., pg_logical_emit_message()?

I've updated the first patch, based on comments
from both Tsunakwa-San and Fujii-San mainly.
I'll take other comments in the next patch.
(Note that this patch passes make check-world but
doesn't pass installcheck-world yet.)

The assertion failure Fujii-San reported in the past has been protected by
adding a check to detect whether PREPARE TRANSACTION is issued
when wal_level=none or not in the v02.
Meanwhile, I didn't change the code for COMMIT PREPARED
because prohibiting usage of PREPARE TRANSACTION
means user cannot use COMMIT PREPARED as well.
I learnt this way of modification from the case that when max_prepared_transaction
is set to zero, PREPARE TRANSACTION cannot be used because of wa_level check,
while issuing COMMIT TRANSACTION itself doesn't claim wal_level.
Just prohibiting PREPARE TRANSACTION seemed OK for me.

As for pg_resetwal (and other commands like pg_rewind),
I didn't make any change. pg_resetwal is used to make corrupted server
start up again as a *last* resort by guessing the content of the control file,
while wal_level=none is designed never to make
the server start again when any unexpected crash is detected.
Here, the documentation in the patch about wal_level=none
requests user to recreate the whole cluster again
when such a corruption of the cluster happens. Thus, it's not natural to think
that user of wal_level=none will continue to use the coruppted cluster forcibly
by applying pg_resetwal. This is the reason I made no fix of pg_resetwal.
In terms of other commands, I don't think there was a need to fix.

By the way, I'm not sure why functions related to replication origin
(e.g. pg_replication_origin_create) doesn't have a check of
wal_level. It can be used when wal_level < logical even though
their purposes are to safely keep track of replication progress.
Did it mean something special to execute such function when wal_level < logical ?
In the patch, I added an error check on this point.

Another similar case is that
there's no test to check wal_level for pg_logical_emit_message.
In my humble opinion, pg_logical_emit_message should not be used
when wal_level <= minimal. I didn't think that
without setting up a slot for logical replication
(with the restriction that user cannot create a slot by
pg_create_physical_replication_slot when wal_level < replica),
plugins will utilize message from pg_logical_emit_message.
Or, if there is a slot that has been created before
restarting the server to turn on wal_level=none,
I cannot get the worth to execute the function
because other kinds of WAL are not issued.
Thus, I prohibited the usage of pg_logical_emit_message this time.
Did it make sense ?

Best,
Takamichi Osumi