hio: Take number of prior relation extensions into account
authorAndres Freund <[email protected]>
Mon, 14 Aug 2023 16:54:03 +0000 (09:54 -0700)
committerAndres Freund <[email protected]>
Mon, 14 Aug 2023 18:33:09 +0000 (11:33 -0700)
commit82a4edabd272f70d044faec8cf7fd1eab92d9991
tree10ffcc17c59ed5c753822166fff4c082d394a9f7
parent94f9c087421ccda6a615df2dda6c40fb99570fa9
hio: Take number of prior relation extensions into account

The new relation extension logic, introduced in 00d1e02be24, could lead to
slowdowns in some scenarios. E.g., when loading narrow rows into a table using
COPY, the caller of RelationGetBufferForTuple() will only request a small
number of pages. Without concurrency, we just extended using pwritev() in that
case. However, if there is *some* concurrency, we switched between extending
by a small number of pages and a larger number of pages, depending on the
number of waiters for the relation extension logic.  However, some
filesystems, XFS in particular, do not perform well when switching between
extending files using fallocate() and pwritev().

To avoid that issue, remember the number of prior relation extensions in
BulkInsertState and extend more aggressively if there were prior relation
extensions. That not just avoids the aforementioned slowdown, but also leads
to noticeable performance gains in other situations, primarily due to
extending more aggressively when there is no concurrency. I should have done
it this way from the get go.

Reported-by: Masahiko Sawada <[email protected]>
Author: Andres Freund <[email protected]>
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAD21AoDvDmUQeJtZrau1ovnT_smN940=Kp6mszNGK3bq9yRN6g@mail.gmail.com
Backpatch: 16-, where the new relation extension code was added
src/backend/access/heap/heapam.c
src/backend/access/heap/hio.c
src/include/access/hio.h