DESCRIPTION: Distribute Types to worker nodes
When to propagate
==============
There are two logical moments that types could be distributed to the worker nodes
- When they get used ( just in time distribution )
- When they get created ( proactive distribution )
The just in time distribution follows the model used by how schema's get created right before we are going to create a table in that schema, for types this would be when the table uses a type as its column.
The proactive distribution is suitable for situations where it is benificial to have the type on the worker nodes directly. They can later on be used in queries where an intermediate result gets created with a cast to this type.
Just in time creation is always the last resort, you cannot create a distributed table before the type gets created. A good example use case is; you have an existing postgres server that needs to scale out. By adding the citus extension, add some nodes to the cluster, and distribute the table. The type got created before citus existed. There was no moment where citus could have propagated the creation of a type.
Proactive is almost always a good option. Types are not resource intensive objects, there is no performance overhead of having 100's of types. If you want to use them in a query to represent an intermediate result (which happens in our test suite) they just work.
There is however a moment when proactive type distribution is not beneficial; in transactions where the type is used in a distributed table.
Lets assume the following transaction:
```sql
BEGIN;
CREATE TYPE tt1 AS (a int, b int);
CREATE TABLE t1 AS (a int PRIMARY KEY, b tt1);
SELECT create_distributed_table('t1', 'a');
\copy t1 FROM bigdata.csv
```
Types are node scoped objects; meaning the type exists once per worker. Shards however have best performance when they are created over their own connection. For the type to be visible on all connections it needs to be created and committed before we try to create the shards. Here the just in time situation is most beneficial and follows how we create schema's on the workers. Outside of a transaction block we will just use 1 connection to propagate the creation.
How propagation works
=================
Just in time
-----------
Just in time propagation hooks into the infrastructure introduced in #2882. It adds types as a supported object in `SupportedDependencyByCitus`. This will make sure that any object being distributed by citus that depends on types will now cascade into types. When types are depending them self on other objects they will get created first.
Creation later works by getting the ddl commands to create the object by its `ObjectAddress` in `GetDependencyCreateDDLCommands` which will dispatch types to `CreateTypeDDLCommandsIdempotent`.
For the correct walking of the graph we follow array types, when later asked for the ddl commands for array types we return `NIL` (empty list) which makes that the object will not be recorded as distributed, (its an internal type, dependant on the user type).
Proactive distribution
---------------------
When the user creates a type (composite or enum) we will have a hook running in `multi_ProcessUtility` after the command has been applied locally. Running after running locally makes that we already have an `ObjectAddress` for the type. This is required to mark the type as being distributed.
Keeping the type up to date
====================
For types that are recorded in `pg_dist_object` (eg. `IsObjectDistributed` returns true for the `ObjectAddress`) we will intercept the utility commands that alter the type.
- `AlterTableStmt` with `relkind` set to `OBJECT_TYPE` encapsulate changes to the fields of a composite type.
- `DropStmt` with removeType set to `OBJECT_TYPE` encapsulate `DROP TYPE`.
- `AlterEnumStmt` encapsulates changes to enum values.
Enum types can not be changed transactionally. When the execution on a worker fails a warning will be shown to the user the propagation was incomplete due to worker communication failure. An idempotent command is shown for the user to re-execute when the worker communication is fixed.
Keeping types up to date is done via the executor. Before the statement is executed locally we create a plan on how to apply it on the workers. This plan is executed after we have applied the statement locally.
All changes to types need to be done in the same transaction for types that have already been distributed and will fail with an error if parallel queries have already been executed in the same transaction. Much like foreign keys to reference tables.
After this change all the logic related to shard data fetch logic
will be removed. Planner won't plan any ShardFetchTask anymore.
Shard fetch related steps in real time executor and task-tracker
executor have been removed.
Custom Scan is a node in the planned statement which helps external providers
to abstract data scan not just for foreign data wrappers but also for regular
relations so you can benefit your version of caching or hardware optimizations.
This sounds like only an abstraction on the data scan layer, but we can use it
as an abstraction for our distributed queries. The only thing we need to do is
to find distributable parts of the query, plan for them and replace them with
a Citus Custom Scan. Then, whenever PostgreSQL hits this custom scan node in
its Vulcano style execution, it will call our callback functions which run
distributed plan and provides tuples to the upper node as it scans a regular
relation. This means fewer code changes, fewer bugs and more supported features
for us!
First, in the distributed query planner phase, we create a Custom Scan which
wraps the distributed plan. For real-time and task-tracker executors, we add
this custom plan under the master query plan. For router executor, we directly
pass the custom plan because there is not any master query. Then, we simply let
the PostgreSQL executor run this plan. When it hits the custom scan node, we
call the related executor parts for distributed plan, fill the tuple store in
the custom scan and return results to PostgreSQL executor in Vulcano style,
a tuple per XXX_ExecScan() call.
* Modify planner to utilize Custom Scan node.
* Create different scan methods for different executors.
* Use native PostgreSQL Explain for master part of queries.
is now a `::regtype` using the qualified name of the column type,
not the column type OID which may differ between master/worker nodes.
Test coverage of a hash reparitition using a UDT as the join column.
Note that the UDFs `worker_hash_partition_table` and `worker_range_partition_table`
are unchanged, and rightly expect an OID for the column type; but the
planner code building the commands now allows for `::regtype` casting
to do its magic.
Fixescitusdata/citus#111.
Nils Dijk
mehmet furkan şahin
velioglu
Marco Slot
Metin Doslu
Andres Freund
Robin Thomas