The index is scanned by a single process, but then all cooperating
processes can iterate jointly over the resulting set of heap blocks.
In the future, we might also want to support using a parallel bitmap
index scan to set up for a parallel bitmap heap scan, but that's a
job for another day.
Dilip Kumar, with some corrections and cosmetic changes by me. The
larger patch set of which this is a part has been reviewed and tested
by (at least) Andres Freund, Amit Khandekar, Tushar Ahuja, Rafia
Sabih, Haribabu Kommi, Thomas Munro, and me.
Discussion: http://postgr.es/m/CAFiTN-uc4=0WxRGfCzs-xfkMYcSEWUC-Fon6thkJGjkh9i=13A@mail.gmail.com
Commit 45be99f8cd took the position
that performing a merge join in parallel was not likely to work out
well, but this conclusion was greeted with skepticism even at the
time. Whether it was true then or not, it's clearly not true any
more now that we have parallel index scan.
Dilip Kumar, reviewed by Amit Kapila and by me.
Discussion: http://postgr.es/m/CAFiTN-v3=cM6nyFwFGp0fmvY4=kk79Hq9Fgu0u8CSJ-EEq1Tiw@mail.gmail.com
Commit 5262f7a4fc added similar support
for parallel index scans; this extends that work to index-only scans.
As with parallel index scans, this requires support from the index AM,
so currently parallel index-only scans will only be possible for btree
indexes.
Rafia Sabih, reviewed and tested by Rahila Syed, Tushar Ahuja,
and Amit Kapila
Discussion: http://postgr.es/m/CAOGQiiPEAs4C=TBp0XShxBvnWXuzGL2u++Hm1=qnCpd6_Mf8Fw@mail.gmail.com
In combination with 569174f1be, which
taught the btree AM how to perform parallel index scans, this allows
parallel index scan plans on btree indexes. This infrastructure
should be general enough to support parallel index scans for other
index AMs as well, if someone updates them to support parallel
scans.
Amit Kapila, reviewed and tested by Anastasia Lubennikova, Tushar
Ahuja, and Haribabu Kommi, and me.
When min_parallel_relation_size was added, the only supported type
of parallel scan was a parallel sequential scan, but there are
pending patches for parallel index scan, parallel index-only scan,
and parallel bitmap heap scan. Those patches introduce two new
types of complications: first, what's relevant is not really the
total size of the relation but the portion of it that we will scan;
and second, index pages and heap pages shouldn't necessarily be
treated in exactly the same way. Typically, the number of index
pages will be quite small, but that doesn't necessarily mean that
a parallel index scan can't pay off.
Therefore, we introduce min_parallel_table_scan_size, which works
out a degree of parallelism for scans based on the number of table
pages that will be scanned (and which is therefore equivalent to
min_parallel_relation_size for parallel sequential scans) and also
min_parallel_index_scan_size which can be used to work out a degree
of parallelism based on the number of index pages that will be
scanned.
Amit Kapila and Robert Haas
Discussion: http://postgr.es/m/CAA4eK1KowGSYYVpd2qPpaPPA5R90r++QwDFbrRECTE9H_HvpOg@mail.gmail.com
Discussion: http://postgr.es/m/CAA4eK1+TnM4pXQbvn7OXqam+k_HZqb0ROZUMxOiL6DWJYCyYow@mail.gmail.com
This doesn't do anything to make Param nodes anything other than
parallel-restricted, so this only helps with uncorrelated subplans,
and it's not necessarily very cheap because each worker will run the
subplan separately (just as a Hash Join will build a separate copy of
the hash table in each participating process), but it's a first step
toward supporting cases that are more likely to help in practice, and
is occasionally useful on its own.
Amit Kapila, reviewed and tested by Rafia Sabih, Dilip Kumar, and
me.
Discussion: http://postgr.es/m/CAA4eK1+e8Z45D2n+rnDMDYsVEb5iW7jqaCH_tvPMYau=1Rru9w@mail.gmail.com
Remove the plpgsql wrapping that hides the context. So now the test
will fail if the work doesn't actually happen in a parallel worker. Run
the test in its own test group to ensure it won't run out of resources
for that.
The previous code neglected the fact that the scanjoin_target might
carry sortgroupref labelings that we need to absorb. Instead, do
create_projection_path() unconditionally, and tweak the path's cost
estimate after the fact. (I'm now convinced that we ought to refactor
the way we account for sometimes not needing a separate projection step,
but right now is not the time for that sort of cleanup.)
Problem identified by Amit Kapila, patch by me.
Commit 04ae11f62e removed some broken
code to apply the scan/join target to partial paths, but its theory
that this processing step is totally unnecessary turns out to be wrong.
Put similar code back again, but this time, check for parallel-safety
and avoid in-place modifications to paths that may already have been
used as part of some other path.
(This is not an entirely elegant solution to this problem; it might
be better, for example, to postpone generate_gather_paths for the
topmost scan/join rel until after the scan/join target has been
applied. But this is not the time for such redesign work.)
Amit Kapila and Robert Haas
In commit 8c1d9d56e9, I attempted to
add a regression test that would fail if the target list was pushed
into a parallel worker, but due to brain fade on my part, it just
randomly fails whether anything bad or not, because the error check
inside the parallel_restricted() function tests whether there is
*any process in the system* that is not connected to a client, not
whether the process running the query is not connected to a client.
A little experimentation has left me pessimistic about the
prospects of doing better here in a short amount of time, so let's
just fall back to checking that the plan is as we expect and leave
the execution-time check for another day.
Commit 14a254fb52 managed not to
exercise the code it was intended to test, and the comment explaining
why no "parallel worker" line showed up in the context wasn't right.
Amit Kapila, tweaked by me per Amit's analysis.
Robert Haas
Peter Eisentraut
Tom Lane
Noah Misch