Re: Triggers and scalability in high transaction tables.

Tim Uckun <timuckun@gmail.com> writes:

> I want to write a trigger which runs semi-complicated code after each insert.  I have done some reading and from what I can gather this could cause problems because
> after insert triggers "don't spill to the disk" and can cause queue problems.   Many people suggest LISTEN NOTIFY but that's not going to help me because my daemons
> could be offline and I would lose records. 
>
> I have two questions.
>
> There are some hints out there that it could be possible to do asynchronous triggers based on dblink but I haven't seen any documentation or examples of this.   Is
> there a writeup someplace about this?
>
> Secondly I had the idea of "partitioning" the trigger processing by
> partitioning the table and then putting a trigger on each child
> table.  This way theoretically I could be running the triggers
> in parallel.  Is my presumption correct here?  If I only
> have one table the trigger calls get queued up one at a time but if I
> partition my table into N tables I am running N triggers
> simultaneously?
>

False on both counts.

Nothing to prevent concurrent firing of same trigger on same table given
multi session concurrent insert.

Nothing to prevent contention related single-threading of any triggers
firing for whatever reason if  the code they are running  will result in
lock contention with other sessions.

Just like 2 or more sessions trying to update the same row,  you are
going to single thread around such an operation like it or not.

You need to tell us a lot more about your problem and what the triggers
do.


> Thanks.
>

--
Jerry Sievers
Postgres DBA/Development Consulting
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p: 312.241.7800