Thank you Ian for the prompt reply! I will certainly have a look at pg_stat_statements
I also came across mysql_fdw (https://github.com/EnterpriseDB/mysql_fdw) that features a connection pool shared across queries. It uses a hash table with the serverid and userid as lookup key : https://github.com/EnterpriseDB/mysql_fdw/blob/REL-2_5_4/connection.c#L55 The hash table is allocated in the cache memory context but it worries me that 1) no locks are used, 2) the "ConnectionHash" variable is declared static so in the multi-process architecture of Postgres could have been the case that multiple copies of this exist when the shared library of mysql_fdw is loaded?
Best regards
Stelios
On 4 Aug 2020, at 06:25, Ian Lawrence Barwick <barwick@gmail.com> wrote:
I am trying to implement a FDW in Postgres for accessing a web api and I would like to keep information like for example the total number of requests submiited. Ideally these data should be kept “per-user” and of course with the proper locking to eliminate race conditions. So the question I have is how to design such a global (but per user and database) state, using the C FDW API of Postgres. I have gone through the API and for example I see various fdw_private fields in the query planning structures and callbacks but these do not seem to be relevant to my requirements. Another possiblity seems to be to use shared memory (https://www.postgresql.org/docs/12/xfunc-c.html#id-1.8.3.13.14) but it is even less clear how to do it.
Shared memory would probably work; you'd need to load the FDW via "shared_preload_libraries" and have the FDW handler function(s) update shared memory with whatever statistics you want to track. You could then define SQL functions to retrieve the stored values, and possibly persist them over server restarts by storing/retrieving them from a file.
Look at "pg_stat_statements" for a good example of how to do that kind of thing.
