The old algorithm was found to not be the usual CRC-32 algorithm, used by
Ethernet et al. We were using a non-reflected lookup table with code meant
for a reflected lookup table. That's a strange combination that AFAICS does
not correspond to any bit-wise CRC calculation, which makes it difficult to
reason about its properties. Although it has worked well in practice, seems
safer to use a well-known algorithm.
Since we're changing the algorithm anyway, we might as well choose a
different polynomial. The Castagnoli polynomial has better error-correcting
properties than the traditional CRC-32 polynomial, even if we had
implemented it correctly. Another reason for picking that is that some new
CPUs have hardware support for calculating CRC-32C, but not CRC-32, let
alone our strange variant of it. This patch doesn't add any support for such
hardware, but a future patch could now do that.
The old algorithm is kept around for tsquery and pg_trgm, which use the
values in indexes that need to remain compatible so that pg_upgrade works.
While we're at it, share the old lookup table for CRC-32 calculation
between hstore, ltree and core. They all use the same table, so might as
well.
Ephemeral slots - slots that shouldn't survive database restarts -
weren't properly cleaned up after a immediate/crash restart. They were
ignored in the sense that they weren't restored into memory and thus
didn't cause unwanted resource retention; but they prevented a new
slot with the same name from being created.
Now ephemeral slots are fully removed during startup.
Backpatch to 9.4 where replication slots where added.
Change the order of checks in similar functions to be the same; remove
a parameter that's not needed anymore; rename a memory context and
expand a couple of comments.
Per review comments from Amit Kapila
This feature, building on previous commits, allows the write-ahead log
stream to be decoded into a series of logical changes; that is,
inserts, updates, and deletes and the transactions which contain them.
It is capable of handling decoding even across changes to the schema
of the effected tables. The output format is controlled by a
so-called "output plugin"; an example is included. To make use of
this in a real replication system, the output plugin will need to be
modified to produce output in the format appropriate to that system,
and to perform filtering.
Currently, information can be extracted from the logical decoding
system only via SQL; future commits will add the ability to stream
changes via walsender.
Andres Freund, with review and other contributions from many other
people, including Álvaro Herrera, Abhijit Menon-Sen, Peter Gheogegan,
Kevin Grittner, Robert Haas, Heikki Linnakangas, Fujii Masao, Abhijit
Menon-Sen, Michael Paquier, Simon Riggs, Craig Ringer, and Steve
Singer.
Replication slots are a crash-safe data structure which can be created
on either a master or a standby to prevent premature removal of
write-ahead log segments needed by a standby, as well as (with
hot_standby_feedback=on) pruning of tuples whose removal would cause
replication conflicts. Slots have some advantages over existing
techniques, as explained in the documentation.
In a few places, we refer to the type of replication slots introduced
by this patch as "physical" slots, because forthcoming patches for
logical decoding will also have slots, but with somewhat different
properties.
Andres Freund and Robert Haas
Heikki Linnakangas
Peter Eisentraut
Andres Freund
Bruce Momjian
Robert Haas
Fujii Masao