Thread: suggestion about time based partitioning and hibernate

Dear all,
I'm looking for ideas here, and it could be someone already stepped
into declarative partitioning of an existing database where Hibernate
(a Java ORM) handles the tables.
The situation is as follows:

create table foo( id primary key, a_date date, ... );

Now, the trivial way to partition this would be on a range based on
a_date, so that the primary key of the tables shifts from id to (id,
a_date). One thing that frightens me is that Hibernate does a lot of
per-row lookups by means of the id, so while the partitioning is
probably going to make things more manageable and even faster in some
scenarios, could lead to drawbacks when Hibernate queries by id.
Moreover, hibernate will think id is unique while it is not anymore.
Last but not least, referencing foreign keys are made by Hibernate
thru the id column, and it means that incoming foreign keys to foo
will not be in place anymore.

Now, I know that I can define a composite key in hibernate, in order
to match the effective new data structure, but this requires a huge
rewrite of the application code.
And after all, we are talking about a non-PostgreSQL related piece, so
the problem is not on the PostgreSQL side.

Anyone has already done a partitioning in such scenario?

I am thinking that partitioning on an hash of id could be the only way
to go without having to touch the hibernate side, even if this would
bring up a less balanced partitioned structure. In such case, I mean
partitioning by hash, having a table with 60 millions rows per 50 GB
in size, what would be the rule of thumb to select the number of
partitions (i.e., a suggested modulus)?

I will appreciate any suggestion.

Thanks,
Luca

On 7/18/23 01:18, Luca Ferrari wrote:

Dear all,
I'm looking for ideas here, and it could be someone already stepped
into declarative partitioning of an existing database where Hibernate
(a Java ORM) handles the tables.
The situation is as follows:

create table foo( id primary key, a_date date, ... );

Now, the trivial way to partition this would be on a range based on
a_date, so that the primary key of the tables shifts from id to (id,
a_date). One thing that frightens me is that Hibernate does a lot of
per-row lookups by means of the id, so while the partitioning is
probably going to make things more manageable and even faster in some
scenarios, could lead to drawbacks when Hibernate queries by id.
Moreover, hibernate will think id is unique while it is not anymore.
Last but not least, referencing foreign keys are made by Hibernate
thru the id column, and it means that incoming foreign keys to foo
will not be in place anymore.

Now, I know that I can define a composite key in hibernate, in order
to match the effective new data structure, but this requires a huge
rewrite of the application code.
And after all, we are talking about a non-PostgreSQL related piece, so
the problem is not on the PostgreSQL side.

Anyone has already done a partitioning in such scenario?

I am thinking that partitioning on an hash of id could be the only way
to go without having to touch the hibernate side, even if this would
bring up a less balanced partitioned structure. In such case, I mean
partitioning by hash, having a table with 60 millions rows per 50 GB
in size, what would be the rule of thumb to select the number of
partitions (i.e., a suggested modulus)?

We're in the exact same situation, using Hibernate and having many tables like foo, partitioned by a_date with PK of (id, a_date) and FK definitions (id, a_date).

It was a massive mistake, since many queries span partitions.  Within a year, I "departitioned" all tables except two giant tables that have large bytea columns.  (All the formerly partitioned tables still have (id, a_date) as PK and FK.  I'd like to change that, but the amount of code change is untennable given them amount of new features that need to be added.)

Thus, my recommendations are:
1. only partition the tables you must, and
2. partition by id.

On 2023-Jul-18, Luca Ferrari wrote:

> Dear all,
> I'm looking for ideas here, and it could be someone already stepped
> into declarative partitioning of an existing database where Hibernate
> (a Java ORM) handles the tables.
> The situation is as follows:
> 
> create table foo( id primary key, a_date date, ... );
> 
> Now, the trivial way to partition this would be on a range based on
> a_date, so that the primary key of the tables shifts from id to (id,
> a_date).

Hmm.  If you can make partitioning give you some benefit without having
to change the model, then by all means explore it.  But if you're forced
to change the model (in this case, by adding a column to your primary
key), that is going to cause you lots of pain, and some queries might
become slower rather than faster.  Therefore I suggest to avoid doing
that.  Either look at some other partitioning scheme that doesn't
involve adding columns to the primary key, or disregard partitioning for
this table entirely.

-- 
Álvaro Herrera         PostgreSQL Developer  —  https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/

On Wed, Jul 19, 2023 at 6:45 PM Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org> wrote:
>
> Therefore I suggest to avoid doing
> that.  Either look at some other partitioning scheme that doesn't
> involve adding columns to the primary key, or disregard partitioning for
> this table entirely.

What do you mean by "other partitioning scheme"? There is nothing that
comes into my mind at the moment.
The problem is that, unluckily, the table is already greater than 50GB
in seize and is keep growing, so I guess something has to be done, at
least for a manainance point of view.

Would a partition by hash on the single column primary key be such a bad idea?

Thanks,
Luca

On 7/20/23 10:31, Luca Ferrari wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 19, 2023 at 6:45 PM Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org> wrote:
>> Therefore I suggest to avoid doing
>> that.  Either look at some other partitioning scheme that doesn't
>> involve adding columns to the primary key, or disregard partitioning for
>> this table entirely.
> What do you mean by "other partitioning scheme"? There is nothing that
> comes into my mind at the moment.
> The problem is that, unluckily, the table is already greater than 50GB
> in seize and is keep growing, so I guess something has to be done, at
> least for a manainance point of view.
>
> Would a partition by hash on the single column primary key be such a bad idea?

Just do a range partition by the existing PK.

-- 
Born in Arizona, moved to Babylonia.