If we have an array of records stored on disk, the individual record fields
cannot contain out-of-line TOAST pointers: the tuptoaster.c mechanisms are
only prepared to deal with TOAST pointers appearing in top-level fields of
a stored row. The same applies for ranges over composite types, nested
composites, etc. However, the existing code only took care of expanding
sub-field TOAST pointers for the case of nested composites, not for other
structured types containing composites. For example, given a command such
as
UPDATE tab SET arraycol = ARRAY[(ROW(x,42)::mycompositetype] ...
where x is a direct reference to a field of an on-disk tuple, if that field
is long enough to be toasted out-of-line then the TOAST pointer would be
inserted as-is into the array column. If the source record for x is later
deleted, the array field value would become a dangling pointer, leading
to errors along the line of "missing chunk number 0 for toast value ..."
when the value is referenced. A reproducible test case for this was
provided by Jan Pecek, but it seems likely that some of the "missing chunk
number" reports we've heard in the past were caused by similar issues.
Code-wise, the problem is that PG_DETOAST_DATUM() is not adequate to
produce a self-contained Datum value if the Datum is of composite type.
Seen in this light, the problem is not just confined to arrays and ranges,
but could also affect some other places where detoasting is done in that
way, for example form_index_tuple().
I tried teaching the array code to apply toast_flatten_tuple_attribute()
along with PG_DETOAST_DATUM() when the array element type is composite,
but this was messy and imposed extra cache lookup costs whether or not any
TOAST pointers were present, indeed sometimes when the array element type
isn't even composite (since sometimes it takes a typcache lookup to find
that out). The idea of extending that approach to all the places that
currently use PG_DETOAST_DATUM() wasn't attractive at all.
This patch instead solves the problem by decreeing that composite Datum
values must not contain any out-of-line TOAST pointers in the first place;
that is, we expand out-of-line fields at the point of constructing a
composite Datum, not at the point where we're about to insert it into a
larger tuple. This rule is applied only to true composite Datums, not
to tuples that are being passed around the system as tuples, so it's not
as invasive as it might sound at first. With this approach, the amount
of code that has to be touched for a full solution is greatly reduced,
and added cache lookup costs are avoided except when there actually is
a TOAST pointer that needs to be inlined.
The main drawback of this approach is that we might sometimes dereference
a TOAST pointer that will never actually be used by the query, imposing a
rather large cost that wasn't there before. On the other side of the coin,
if the field value is used multiple times then we'll come out ahead by
avoiding repeat detoastings. Experimentation suggests that common SQL
coding patterns are unaffected either way, though. Applications that are
very negatively affected could be advised to modify their code to not fetch
columns they won't be using.
In future, we might consider reverting this solution in favor of detoasting
only at the point where data is about to be stored to disk, using some
method that can drill down into multiple levels of nested structured types.
That will require defining new APIs for structured types, though, so it
doesn't seem feasible as a back-patchable fix.
Note that this patch changes HeapTupleGetDatum() from a macro to a function
call; this means that any third-party code using that macro will not get
protection against creating TOAST-pointer-containing Datums until it's
recompiled. The same applies to any uses of PG_RETURN_HEAPTUPLEHEADER().
It seems likely that this is not a big problem in practice: most of the
tuple-returning functions in core and contrib produce outputs that could
not possibly be toasted anyway, and the same probably holds for third-party
extensions.
This bug has existed since TOAST was invented, so back-patch to all
supported branches.
Since C99, it's been standard for printf and friends to accept a "z" size
modifier, meaning "whatever size size_t has". Up to now we've generally
dealt with printing size_t values by explicitly casting them to unsigned
long and using the "l" modifier; but this is really the wrong thing on
platforms where pointers are wider than longs (such as Win64). So let's
start using "z" instead. To ensure we can do that on all platforms, teach
src/port/snprintf.c to understand "z", and add a configure test to force
use of that implementation when the platform's version doesn't handle "z".
Having done that, modify a bunch of places that were using the
unsigned-long hack to use "z" instead. This patch doesn't pretend to have
gotten everyplace that could benefit, but it catches many of them. I made
an effort in particular to ensure that all uses of the same error message
text were updated together, so as not to increase the number of
translatable strings.
It's possible that this change will result in format-string warnings from
pre-C99 compilers. We might have to reconsider if there are any popular
compilers that will warn about this; but let's start by seeing what the
buildfarm thinks.
Andres Freund, with a little additional work by me
Previously, fastgetattr() and heap_getattr() tested their fourth argument
against a null pointer, but any attempt to use them with a literal-NULL
fourth argument evaluated to *(void *)0, resulting in a compiler error.
Remove these NULL tests to avoid leading future readers of this code to
believe that this has a chance of working. Also clean up related legacy
code in nocachegetattr(), heap_getsysattr(), and nocache_index_getattr().
The new coding standard is that any code which calls a getattr-type
function or macro which takes an isnull argument MUST pass a valid
boolean pointer. Per discussion with Bruce Momjian, Tom Lane, Alvaro
Herrera.
values being complained of.
In passing, also remove the arbitrary length limitation in the similar
error detail message for foreign key violations.
Itagaki Takahiro
This commit breaks any code that assumes that the mere act of forming a tuple
(without writing it to disk) does not "toast" any fields. While all available
regression tests pass, I'm not totally sure that we've fixed every nook and
cranny, especially in contrib.
Greg Stark with some help from Tom Lane
Get rid of VARATT_SIZE and VARATT_DATA, which were simply redundant with
VARSIZE and VARDATA, and as a consequence almost no code was using the
longer names. Rename the length fields of struct varlena and various
derived structures to catch anyplace that was accessing them directly;
and clean up various places so caught. In itself this patch doesn't
change any behavior at all, but it is necessary infrastructure if we hope
to play any games with the representation of varlena headers.
Greg Stark and Tom Lane
I'm going to insist on reversion of this entire patch unless pgrminclude
is upgraded to a less broken state, but in the meantime let's get contrib
passing regression again.
convention for isnull flags. Also, remove the useless InsertIndexResult
return struct from index AM aminsert calls --- there is no reason for
the caller to know where in the index the tuple was inserted, and we
were wasting a palloc cycle per insert to deliver this uninteresting
value (plus nontrivial complexity in some AMs).
I forced initdb because of the change in the signature of the aminsert
routines, even though nothing really looks at those pg_proc entries...
Also performed an initial run through of upgrading our Copyright date to
extend to 2005 ... first run here was very simple ... change everything
where: grep 1996-2004 && the word 'Copyright' ... scanned through the
generated list with 'less' first, and after, to make sure that I only
picked up the right entries ...
width types and varlena types, since with the introduction of CSTRING as
a more-or-less-real type, these concepts aren't identical. I've tried to
use varlena consistently to denote datatypes with typlen = -1, ie, they
have a length word and are potentially TOASTable; while the term variable
width covers both varlena and cstring (and, perhaps, someday other types
with other rules for computing the actual width). No code changes in this
commit except for renaming a couple macros.
value '-2' is used to indicate a variable-width type whose width is
computed as strlen(datum)+1. Everything that looks at typlen is updated
except for array support, which Joe Conway is working on; at the moment
it wouldn't work to try to create an array of cstring.
yesterday's proposal to pghackers. Also remove unnecessary parameters
to heap_beginscan, heap_rescan. I modified pg_proc.h to reflect the
new numbers of parameters for the AM interface routines, but did not
force an initdb because nothing actually looks at those fields.
compressed storage works perfectly well. Might as well have a coherent
strategy for applying it, rather than the haphazard store-what-you-get
approach that was in the code before. The strategy I've set up here is
to attempt compression of any compressible index value exceeding
BLCKSZ/16, or about 500 bytes by default.
