"all tuples visible" flag in heap page headers. The flag update *must*
be applied before calling XLogInsert, but heap_update and the tuple
moving routines in VACUUM FULL were ignoring this rule. A crash and
replay could therefore leave the flag incorrectly set, causing rows
to appear visible in seqscans when they should not be. This might explain
recent reports of data corruption from Jeff Ross and others.
In passing, do a bit of editorialization on comments in visibilitymap.c.
heap page, where a set bit indicates that all tuples on the page are
visible to all transactions, and the page therefore doesn't need
vacuuming. It is stored in a new relation fork.
Lazy vacuum uses the visibility map to skip pages that don't need
vacuuming. Vacuum is also responsible for setting the bits in the map.
In the future, this can hopefully be used to implement index-only-scans,
but we can't currently guarantee that the visibility map is always 100%
up-to-date.
In addition to the visibility map, there's a new PD_ALL_VISIBLE flag on
each heap page, also indicating that all tuples on the page are visible to
all transactions. It's important that this flag is kept up-to-date. It
is also used to skip visibility tests in sequential scans, which gives a
small performance gain on seqscans.
Tom Lane
Heikki Linnakangas
Bruce Momjian