Thread: a new problem in MERGE

a new problem in MERGE

From
Boxuan Zhai
Date:
Dear Greg, 

How are you?

As we talked last week, there is a bug about the "origslot" field assertion. 
 
TRAP: FailedAssertion("!(epqstate->origslot != ((void *)0))", File: "execMain.c", Line: 1732)


I checked my codes and found the reason of this problem. In the original process of "ExecModifyTable()" function, there is a line of code  "EvalPlanQualSetSlot(&node->mt_epqstate, planSlot);"

It is specially used to init the epqstate->origslot field with the tuple slot returned by the underlying plan. However, in our implementation of MERGE, this part is missed in "ExecMerge()" function. 

At the beginning, I just tried to form a new slot in "ExecMerge()" and use it as the epqstate->origslot for the merge actions' execution functions. This part is simple. 

But, during this process, I found a more serious problem: our MERGE currently does not support the use of system attributes in the action conditions and target lists. 

For example, if we raise queries like the following, there will pops some ERROR message. 

(table target has oid attribute)
MERGE INTO target t USING source  s ON t.id = s.id
WHEN MATCHED AND t.oid >100000 THEN update SET val = t.val + s.add;

or 

MERGE INTO target t USING source  s ON t.id = s.id
WHEN MATCHED AND t.xmin = 1000 THEN update SET val = t.val + s.add;



The reason for the above problem is the missing of system attribute in the result slot returned by the main plan of MERGE. 

In our implementation,  the Main Pan of MERGE just generate a tuple slot contain all the direct vars from source table and target table. The expressions in MERGE action conditions and target lists are then calculated based on the result slot of main plan. 

Currently, all the system attributes (except the ctid of target table) are not included in main plan. So, the evaluation of action condition and target entries will fail if they involve some system attributes. 

If we want to solve this problem, we need to extend the target list of main plan before execution (in analyzer or planner), make sure it contains all the attributes appeared in any of the MERGE actions. This may lead to adjustments to many part of the process of MERGE. For example, within the planner, I created a function specially for mapping the Var nodes in actions to attributes in the result slot. This function should be rewritten for this new case.  

I have plan to fix the above two bugs together. (in fact, I have already started coding in merge_v202 edition). My question is how should I make my update be consistent with yours. Is it possible for you to give me an edition that I can work on? 

Thanks!

Yours Boxuan

Re: a new problem in MERGE

From
Greg Smith
Date:
Boxuan Zhai wrote:
> I have plan to fix the above two bugs together. (in fact, I have
> already started coding in merge_v202 edition). My question is how
> should I make my update be consistent with yours. Is it possible for
> you to give me an edition that I can work on?

I just got this reconciled with HEAD again.  There have been two changes
I made in the code you'll eventually want in your working copy:

1) Fix NIL/NULL confusion:
https://github.com/greg2ndQuadrant/postgres/commit/9013ba9e81490e3623add1b029760817021297c0

2) Update ExecMerge to accept and pass through an oldtuple value.  This
is needed to make the code compatible with the PostgreSQL git HEAD after
the changes made in the 2009-09 CommitFest.  Bit rot updates made:
https://github.com/greg2ndQuadrant/postgres/commit/be03bd201720f42a666f7e356ec8507c1357f502

I'm not sure if how I did (2) is correct for all cases, but at least the
code compiles again now and the server will start.  Attached is an
updated patch that applies to HEAD as of right now, and that code has
been pushed to
https://github.com/greg2ndQuadrant/postgres/tree/merge-unstable with the
changes rebased to be the last two commits.

It fails "make installcheck" on my system.  But as the initial diffs I
looked at relate to enums and such, I don't think that's a problem with
your patch.  Will investigate further here with some of my own patches
I'm working on today.  Hopefully this is enough to unblock what you were
looking for more details from me about.

--
Greg Smith   2ndQuadrant US    greg@2ndQuadrant.com   Baltimore, MD



Attachment

Re: a new problem in MERGE

From
Robert Haas
Date:
On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 2:41 PM, Greg Smith <greg@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:
> Boxuan Zhai wrote:
>>
>> I have plan to fix the above two bugs together. (in fact, I have already
>> started coding in merge_v202 edition). My question is how should I make my
>> update be consistent with yours. Is it possible for you to give me an
>> edition that I can work on?
>
> I just got this reconciled with HEAD again.  There have been two changes I
> made in the code you'll eventually want in your working copy:

Boxuan, are you still working on this patch?

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company