[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       postgresql-general
Subject:    Re: [HACKERS] stack usage in toast_insert_or_update()
From:       Tom Lane <tgl () sss ! pgh ! pa ! us>
Date:       2007-01-31 17:41:57
Message-ID: 8853.1170265317 () sss ! pgh ! pa ! us
[Download RAW message or body]

"Pavan Deolasee" <pavan.deolasee@gmail.com> writes:
> On 1/31/07, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>> The toast code takes pains to ensure that the tuples it creates won't be
>> subject to re-toasting.  Else it'd be an infinite recursion.

> I think I found it. The toast_insert_or_update() function gets into an
> unnecessary recursion because of alignment issues. It thus toasts
> already toasted data.  This IMHO might be causing unnecessary
> overheads for each toast operation.

Interesting --- I'd never seen this because both of my usual development
machines have MAXALIGN 8, and it works out that that makes
TOAST_MAX_CHUNK_SIZE 1986, which makes the actual toasted tuple size
2030, which maxaligns to 2032, which is still less than
TOAST_TUPLE_THRESHOLD.  I think the coding was implicitly assuming that
TOAST_TUPLE_THRESHOLD would itself be a maxalign'd value, but it's not
necessarily (and in fact not, with the current page header size ---
I wonder whether the bug was originally masked because the page header
size was different??)

We can't change TOAST_MAX_CHUNK_SIZE without forcing an initdb, but I
think that it would be safe to remove the MAXALIGN'ing of the tuple
size in the tests in heapam.c, that is

    if (HeapTupleHasExternal(tup) ||
        (MAXALIGN(tup->t_len) > TOAST_TUPLE_THRESHOLD))
        heaptup = toast_insert_or_update(relation, tup, NULL);
    else
        heaptup = tup;

becomes

    if (HeapTupleHasExternal(tup) ||
        (tup->t_len > TOAST_TUPLE_THRESHOLD))
        heaptup = toast_insert_or_update(relation, tup, NULL);
    else
        heaptup = tup;

which'll save a cycle or two as well as avoid this corner case.
It seems like a number of the uses of MAXALIGN in tuptoaster.c
are useless/bogus as well.  Comments?

			regards, tom lane

---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ?

               http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq
[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]