Re: max_standby_delay considered harmful

* Robert Haas (robertmhaas@gmail.com) wrote:
> On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 11:37 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> > I'm inclined to think that we should throw away all this logic and just
> > have the slave cancel competing queries if the replay process waits
> > more than max_standby_delay seconds to acquire a lock.
>
> What if we somehow get into a situation where the replay process is
> waiting for a lock over and over and over again, because it keeps
> killing conflicting processes but something restarts them and they
> take locks over again?  It seems hard to ensure that replay will make
> adequate progress with any substantially non-zero value of
> max_standby_delay under this definition.

That was my first question too- but I reread what Tom wrote and came to
a different conclusion: If the reply process waits more than
max_standby_delay to acquire a lock, then it will kill off *everything*
it runs into from that point forward, until it's done with whatever is
currently available.  At that point, the 'timer' would reset back to
zero.

When/how that timer gets reset was a question I had, but I feel like
"until nothing is available" makes sense and is what I assumed Tom was
thinking.
Thanks,
    Stephen