Re: Replaceing records - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Jan Wieck
Subject Re: Replaceing records
Date
Msg-id 3F5EB74F.5010708@Yahoo.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Replaceing records  (Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net>)
Responses Re: Replaceing records
List pgsql-general

Ron Johnson wrote:

> On Fri, 2003-09-05 at 08:29, Jan Wieck wrote:
>> It was not meant against anyone in person and I agree that nested
>> transactions and/or catchable exceptions and continuing afterwards is
>> usefull and missing in PostgreSQL. What Stephan and Richard where
>> actually discussing was more like emulating the REPLACE INTO, and I was
>> responding to that.
>>
>> However, even with nested transactions and exceptions and all that, your
>> problem will not be cleanly solvable. You basically have 2 choices,
>> trying the INSERT first and if that fails with a duplicate key then do
>> the UPDATE, or try the UPDATE first and if no rows got hit do an INSERT.
>> Now if 2 concurrent transactions do try the UPDATE they can both not
>> find the row and do INSERT - one has a dupkey error. But if you try to
>> INSERT and get a duplicate key, in the time between you get the error
>> and issue the UPDATE someone else can issue a DELETE - the row is gone
>> and your UPDATE will fail.
>
> SERIALIZABLE transactions will solve this.

Sure will they.

Care to elaborate a bit about the side effects of SERIALIZABLE? I mean
semantics AND performance wise ... people tend to use suggestions like
this without thinking (about the consequences).


Jan :-T

--
#======================================================================#
# It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
# Let's break this rule - forgive me.                                  #
#================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #


pgsql-general by date:

Previous
From: Tom Lane
Date:
Subject: Re: How to convert a UnixTimestamp to a PostgreSQL date without using ::abstime ?
Next
From: Scott Lamb
Date:
Subject: Re: inserting an apostrophe