If a crash occurred immediately after the first nextval() call for a serial
column, WAL replay would restore the sequence to a state in which it
appeared that no nextval() had been done, thus allowing the first sequence
value to be returned again by the next nextval() call; as reported in
bug #6748 from Xiangming Mei.
More generally, the problem would occur if an ALTER SEQUENCE was executed
on a freshly created or reset sequence. (The manifestation with serial
columns was introduced in 8.2 when we added an ALTER SEQUENCE OWNED BY step
to serial column creation.) The cause is that sequence creation attempted
to save one WAL entry by writing out a WAL record that made it appear that
the first nextval() had already happened (viz, with is_called = true),
while marking the sequence's in-database state with log_cnt = 1 to show
that the first nextval() need not emit a WAL record. However, ALTER
SEQUENCE would emit a new WAL entry reflecting the actual in-database state
(with is_called = false). Then, nextval would allocate the first sequence
value and set is_called = true, but it would trust the log_cnt value and
not emit any WAL record. A crash at this point would thus restore the
sequence to its post-ALTER state, causing the next nextval() call to return
the first sequence value again.
To fix, get rid of the idea of logging an is_called status different from
reality. This means that the first nextval-driven WAL record will happen
at the first nextval call not the second, but the marginal cost of that is
pretty negligible. In addition, make sure that ALTER SEQUENCE resets
log_cnt to zero in any case where it touches sequence parameters that
affect future nextval results. This will result in some user-visible
changes in the contents of a sequence's log_cnt column, as reflected in the
patch's regression test changes; but no application should be depending on
that anyway, since it was already true that log_cnt changes rather
unpredictably depending on checkpoint timing.
In addition, make some basically-cosmetic improvements to get rid of
sequence.c's undesirable intimacy with page layout details. It was always
really trying to WAL-log the contents of the sequence tuple, so we should
have it do that directly using a HeapTuple's t_data and t_len, rather than
backing into it with some magic assumptions about where the tuple would be
on the sequence's page.
Back-patch to all supported branches.
Add new function pg_sequence_parameters that returns a sequence's start,
minimum, maximum, increment, and cycle values, and use that in the view.
(bug #5662; design suggestion by Tom Lane)
Also slightly adjust the view's column order and permissions after review of
SQL standard.
devised for pg_shdepend, namely the individual dependencies are reported as
DETAIL lines rather than coming out as separate NOTICEs. The client-side
report is capped at 100 lines, but the server log always gets a full report.
sequence to be reset to its original starting value. This requires adding the
original start value to the set of parameters (columns) of a sequence object,
which is a user-visible change with potential compatibility implications;
it also forces initdb.
Also add hopefully-SQL-compatible RESTART/CONTINUE IDENTITY options to
TRUNCATE TABLE. RESTART IDENTITY executes ALTER SEQUENCE RESTART for all
sequences "owned by" any of the truncated relations. CONTINUE IDENTITY is
a no-op option.
Zoltan Boszormenyi
by abandoning the idea that it should say SERIAL in the dump. Instead,
dump serial sequences and column defaults just like regular ones.
Add a new backend command ALTER SEQUENCE OWNED BY to let pg_dump recreate
the sequence-to-column dependency that was formerly created "behind the
scenes" by SERIAL. This restores SERIAL to being truly "just a macro"
consisting of component operations that can be stated explicitly in SQL.
Furthermore, the new command allows sequence ownership to be reassigned,
so that old mistakes can be cleaned up.
Also, downgrade the OWNED-BY dependency from INTERNAL to AUTO, since there
is no longer any very compelling argument why the sequence couldn't be
dropped while keeping the column. (This forces initdb, to be sure the
right kinds of dependencies are in there.)
Along the way, add checks to prevent ALTER OWNER or SET SCHEMA on an
owned sequence; you can now only do this indirectly by changing the
owning table's owner or schema. This is an oversight in previous
releases, but probably not worth back-patching.
argument as a 'regclass' value instead of a text string. The frontend
conversion of text string to pg_class OID is now encapsulated as an
implicitly-invocable coercion from text to regclass. This provides
backwards compatibility to the old behavior when the sequence argument
is explicitly typed as 'text'. When the argument is just an unadorned
literal string, it will be taken as 'regclass', which means that the
stored representation will be an OID. This solves longstanding problems
with renaming sequences that are referenced in default expressions, as
well as new-in-8.1 problems with renaming such sequences' schemas or
moving them to another schema. All per recent discussion.
Along the way, fix some rather serious problems in dbmirror's support
for mirroring sequence operations (int4 vs int8 confusion for instance).
last nextval() or setval() performed by the current session. Update the
docs, add regression tests, and bump the catalog version. Patch from
Dennis Björklund, various improvements by Neil Conway.
sequences, as per recent discussion. All these names are now of the
form table_column_type, with digits added if needed to make them unique.
Default constraint names are chosen to be unique across their whole schema,
not just within the parent object, so as to be more SQL-spec-compatible
and make the information schema views more useful.
large objects. Dump all these in pg_dump; also add code to pg_dump
user-defined conversions. Make psql's large object code rely on
the backend for inserting/deleting LOB comments, instead of trying to
hack pg_description directly. Documentation and regression tests added.
Christopher Kings-Lynne, code reviewed by Tom
Add ALTER SEQUENCE to modify min/max/increment/cache/cycle values
Also updated create sequence docs to mention NO MINVALUE, & NO MAXVALUE.
New Files:
doc/src/sgml/ref/alter_sequence.sgml
src/test/regress/expected/sequence.out
src/test/regress/sql/sequence.sql
ALTER SEQUENCE is NOT transactional. It behaves similarly to setval().
It matches the proposed SQL200N spec, as well as Oracle in most ways --
Oracle lacks RESTART WITH for some strange reason.
--
Rod Taylor <rbt@rbt.ca>
Tom Lane
Robert Haas
Simon Riggs
Peter Eisentraut
Neil Conway
Bruce Momjian