Recent changes to DDL and transaction logic resulted in a "regression"
from the viewpoint of users. Previously, DDL commands were allowed in
multi-command transaction blocks, though they were not processed in any
actual transactional manner. We improved the atomicity of our DDL code,
but added a restriction that DDL commands themselves must not occur in
any BEGIN/END transaction block.
To give users back the original functionality (and improved atomicity)
we now keep track of whether a multi-command transaction has modified
data (DML) or schema (DDL). Interleaving the two modification types in
a single transaction is disallowed.
This first step simply permits a single DDL command in such a block,
admittedly an incomplete solution, but one which will permit us to add
full multi-DDL command support in a subsequent commit.
Allows the use of modification commands (INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE) within
transaction blocks (delimited by BEGIN and ROLLBACK/COMMIT), so long as
all modifications hit a subset of nodes involved in the first such com-
mand in the transaction. This does not circumvent the requirement that
each individual modification command must still target a single shard.
For instance, after sending BEGIN, a user might INSERT some rows to a
shard replicated on two nodes. Subsequent modifications can hit other
shards, so long as they are on one or both of these nodes.
SAVEPOINTs are supported, though if the user actually attempts to send
a ROLLBACK command that specifies a SAVEPOINT they will receive an
ERROR at the end of the topmost transaction.
Placements are only marked inactive if at least one replica succeeds
in a transaction where others fail. Non-atomic behavior is possible if
the shard targeted by the initial modification within a transaction has
a higher replication factor than another shard within the same block
and a node with the latter shard has a failure during the COMMIT phase.
Other methods of denoting transaction blocks (multi-statement commands
sent all at once and functions written in e.g. PL/pgSQL or other such
languages) are not presently supported; their treatment remains the
same as before.
Jason Petersen