Re: Freeze avoidance of very large table.

On 4/20/15 1:48 PM, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 20, 2015 at 04:45:34PM +0900, Sawada Masahiko wrote:
>> Attached WIP patch adds Frozen Map which enables us to avoid whole
>> table vacuuming even when full scan is required: preventing XID
>> wraparound failures.
>>
>> Frozen Map is a bitmap with one bit per heap page, and quite similar
>> to Visibility Map. A set bit means that all tuples on heap page are
>> completely frozen, therefore we don't need to do vacuum freeze that
>> page.
>> A bit is set when vacuum(or autovacuum) figures out that all tuples on
>> corresponding heap page are completely frozen, and a bit is cleared
>> when INSERT and UPDATE(only new heap page) are executed.
>
> So, this patch avoids reading the all-frozen pages if it has not been
> modified since the last VACUUM FREEZE?  Since it is already frozen, the
> running VACUUM FREEZE will not modify the page or generate WAL, so is it
> really worth maintaining a new per-page bitmap just to avoid the
> sequential scan of tables every 200MB transactions?  I would like to see
> us reduce the need for VACUUM FREEZE, rather than go in this direction.

How would you propose we do that?

I also think there's better ways we could handle *all* our cleanup work. 
Tuples have a definite lifespan, and there's potentially a lot of 
efficiency to be gained if we could track tuples through their stages of 
life... but I don't see any easy ways to do that.
-- 
Jim Nasby, Data Architect, Blue Treble Consulting
Data in Trouble? Get it in Treble! http://BlueTreble.com