It was possible for deduplication's single value strategy to mistakenly
believe that a very small duplicate tuple counts as one of the six large
tuples that it aims to leave behind after the page finally splits. This
could cause slightly suboptimal space utilization with very low
cardinality indexes, though only under fairly narrow conditions.
To fix, be particular about what kind of tuple counts as a
maxpostingsize-capped tuple. This avoids confusion in the event of a
small tuple that gets "wedged" between two large tuples, where all
tuples on the page are duplicates of the same value.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAH2-Wz=Y+sgSFc-O3LpiZX-POx2bC+okec2KafERHuzdVa7-rQ@mail.gmail.com
Backpatch: 13-, where deduplication was introduced (by commit 0d861bbb)
Use IndexRelationGetNumberOfKeyAttributes() rather than
IndexRelationGetNumberOfAttributes() when determining whether or not two
index tuples are suitable for merging together into a single posting
list tuple. This is a little bit tidier. It brings affected code in
nbtdedup.c a little closer to similar, related code in nbtsplitloc.c.
Deduplication reduces the storage overhead of duplicates in indexes that
use the standard nbtree index access method. The deduplication process
is applied lazily, after the point where opportunistic deletion of
LP_DEAD-marked index tuples occurs. Deduplication is only applied at
the point where a leaf page split would otherwise be required. New
posting list tuples are formed by merging together existing duplicate
tuples. The physical representation of the items on an nbtree leaf page
is made more space efficient by deduplication, but the logical contents
of the page are not changed. Even unique indexes make use of
deduplication as a way of controlling bloat from duplicates whose TIDs
point to different versions of the same logical table row.
The lazy approach taken by nbtree has significant advantages over a GIN
style eager approach. Most individual inserts of index tuples have
exactly the same overhead as before. The extra overhead of
deduplication is amortized across insertions, just like the overhead of
page splits. The key space of indexes works in the same way as it has
since commit dd299df8 (the commit that made heap TID a tiebreaker
column).
Testing has shown that nbtree deduplication can generally make indexes
with about 10 or 15 tuples for each distinct key value about 2.5X - 4X
smaller, even with single column integer indexes (e.g., an index on a
referencing column that accompanies a foreign key). The final size of
single column nbtree indexes comes close to the final size of a similar
contrib/btree_gin index, at least in cases where GIN's posting list
compression isn't very effective. This can significantly improve
transaction throughput, and significantly reduce the cost of vacuuming
indexes.
A new index storage parameter (deduplicate_items) controls the use of
deduplication. The default setting is 'on', so all new B-Tree indexes
automatically use deduplication where possible. This decision will be
reviewed at the end of the Postgres 13 beta period.
There is a regression of approximately 2% of transaction throughput with
synthetic workloads that consist of append-only inserts into a table
with several non-unique indexes, where all indexes have few or no
repeated values. The underlying issue is that cycles are wasted on
unsuccessful attempts at deduplicating items in non-unique indexes.
There doesn't seem to be a way around it short of disabling
deduplication entirely. Note that deduplication of items in unique
indexes is fairly well targeted in general, which avoids the problem
there (we can use a special heuristic to trigger deduplication passes in
unique indexes, since we're specifically targeting "version bloat").
Bump XLOG_PAGE_MAGIC because xl_btree_vacuum changed.
No bump in BTREE_VERSION, since the representation of posting list
tuples works in a way that's backwards compatible with version 4 indexes
(i.e. indexes built on PostgreSQL 12). However, users must still
REINDEX a pg_upgrade'd index to use deduplication, regardless of the
Postgres version they've upgraded from. This is the only way to set the
new nbtree metapage flag indicating that deduplication is generally
safe.
Author: Anastasia Lubennikova, Peter Geoghegan
Reviewed-By: Peter Geoghegan, Heikki Linnakangas
Discussion:
https://postgr.es/m/55E4051B.7020209@postgrespro.ruhttps://postgr.es/m/4ab6e2db-bcee-f4cf-0916-3a06e6ccbb55@postgrespro.ru
Peter Geoghegan