When using `citus.replicate_reference_tables_on_activate = off`,
reference tables need to be replicated later. This can be done using the
`replicate_reference_tables()` UDF. However, this function only allowed
blocking replication. This changes the function to default to logical
replication instead, and allows choosing any of our existing shard
transfer modes.
DESCRIPTION: Use faster custom copy logic for non-blocking shard moves
Non-blocking shard moves consist of two main phases:
1. Initial data copy
2. Catchup phase
This changes the first of these phases significantly. Previously we used the
copy logic provided by postgres subscriptions. This meant we didn't have
to implement it ourselves, but it came with the downside of little control.
When implementing shard splits we needed more control to even make it
work, so we implemented our own logic for copying data between nodes.
This PR starts using that logic for non-blocking shard moves. Doing so
has four main advantages:
1. It uses COPY in binary format when possible, which is cheaper to encode
and decode. Furthermore it very often results in less data that needs to
be sent over the network.
2. It allows us to create the primary key (or other replica identity) after doing
the initial data copy. This should give some speed up over the total run,
because creating an index is bulk is much faster than incrementally building it.
3. It doesn't require a replication slot per parallel copy. Increasing the maximum
number of replication slots uses resources in postgres, even if they are not used.
So reducing the number of replication slots that shard moves need is nice.
4. Logical replication table_sync workers are slow to start up, so if lots of shards
need to be copied that can make it quite slow. This can happen easily when
combining Postgres partitioning with Citus.
Nils Dijk
aykut-bozkurt
Jelte Fennema
Ahmet Gedemenli