Re: Partial aggregates pushdown

On Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 08:51:30AM +0000, Fujii(dot)Yuki(at)df(dot)MitsubishiElectric(dot)co(dot)jp wrote:
> Hi Mr.Bruce, Mr.Pyhalov, hackers.
>
> Thank you for comments. I will try to respond to both of your comments as follows.
> I plan to start revising the patch next week. If you have any comments on the following
> respondences, I would appreciate it if you could give them to me this week.
>
> > From: Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us>
> > Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2023 1:44 AM
> > I agree that this feature is designed for built-in sharding, but it is possible people could be using aggregates on partitions
> > backed by foreign tables without sharding. Adding a requirement for non-sharding setups to need PG 17+ servers might
> > be unreasonable.
> Indeed, it is possible to use partial aggregate pushdown feature for purposes other than sharding.
> The description of the section "F.38.6. Built-in sharding in PostgreSQL" assumes the use of
> Built-in sharding and will be modified to eliminate this assumption.
> The title of this section should be changed to something like "Aggregate on partitioned table".

Sounds good.

> > From: Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us>
> > Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2023 1:44 AM
> > Looking at previous release note incompatibilities, we don't normally change non-administrative functions in a way that
> > causes errors if run on older servers. Based on Alexander's observations, I wonder if we need to re-add the postgres_fdw
> > option to control partial aggregate pushdown, and default it to enabled.
> >
> > If we ever add more function breakage we might need more postgres_fdw options. Fortunately, such changes are rare.
>
> I understand what the problem is. I will put a mechanism maintaining compatibility into the patch.
> I believe there are three approaches.
> Approach 1-1 is preferable because it does not require additional options for postgres_fdw.
> I will revise the patch according to Approach 1-1, unless otherwise commented.
>
> Approach1:
> I ensure that postgres_fdw retrieves the version of each remote server
> and does not partial aggregate pushd down if the server version is less than 17.
> There are two approaches to obtaining remote server versions.
> Approach1-1: postgres_fdw connects a remote server and use PQserverVersion().
> Approach1-2: Adding a postgres_fdw option about a remote server version (like "server_version").
>
> Approach2:
> Adding a postgres_fdw option for partial aggregate pushdown is enable or not
> (like enable_partial_aggregate_pushdown).

These are good questions. Adding a postgres_fdw option called
enable_partial_aggregate_pushdown helps make the purpose of the option
clear, but remote_version can be used for future breakage as well.

I think remote_version is the best idea, and in the documention for the
option, let's explcitly say it is useful to disable partial aggreates
pushdown on pre-PG 17 servers. If we need to use the option for other
cases, we can just update the documentation. When the option is blank,
the default, everything is pushed down.

I see remote_version a logical addition to match our "extensions" option
that controls what extension functions can be pushed down.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> https://momjian.us
EDB https://enterprisedb.com

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