PL/pgSQL graph enumeration function hangs

Started by Chas. Munatalmost 18 years ago4 messagesgeneral
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#1Chas. Munat
chas@munat.com

I have a table of organizations that has a many-to-many relationship
with itself via another table called relationships. The relationships
table has a serial id primary key and parent_id and child_id integer
fields. The organizations table has a couple thousand records and the
maximum depth is around 7 or 8 levels. The graph is directed and is (or
will be) reconvergent.

Using pseudocode from Celko's "SQL for Smarties" book, I wrote the
following function that builds a path enumeration table. I hope to
trigger this function on the rare occasions that the organizations table
is updated. But when I run this function, it hangs.

Can anyone spot the problem? If not, is there a better solution?

I am returning a trigger. There are no arguments. I'm using VOLATILE,
CALLED ON NULL INPUT, and SECURITY INVOKER.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

DECLARE
oldsize integer NOT NULL;
newsize integer NOT NULL;

BEGIN

-- recreate the empty path_enum table
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS organizations_path_enum;
CREATE TABLE organizations_path_enum (
parent_id integer NOT NULL,
child_id integer NOT NULL,
depth integer NOT NULL,
CONSTRAINT depth_not_negative CHECK( depth >= 0 )
);
CREATE INDEX ope_parent_idx ON organizations_path_enum(parent_id);
CREATE INDEX ope_child_idx ON organizations_path_enum(child_id);
CREATE INDEX ope_parent_child_idx ON
organizations_path_enum(parent_id, child_id);
CREATE INDEX ope_child_parent_idx ON
organizations_path_enum(child_id, parent_id);
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX ope_uniq_row_idx ON organizations_path_enum
(parent_id, child_id, depth);

-- load path of node to itself
INSERT INTO organizations_path_enum
SELECT DISTINCT child_id, child_id, 0 FROM relationships;

-- load paths of length = 1 into table
INSERT INTO organizations_path_enum
SELECT DISTINCT parent_id, child_id, 1 FROM relationships;

-- insert rows only while table grows
oldsize := 0;
SELECT COUNT(*) INTO newsize FROM organizations_path_enum;

WHILE oldsize < newsize LOOP
INSERT INTO organizations_path_enum
SELECT o1.parent_id, r1.child_id, (o1.depth + 1)
FROM organizations_path_enum o1, relationships r1
-- advance existing paths by one level
WHERE EXISTS (SELECT * FROM organizations_path_enum AS o2
WHERE r1.parent_id = o2.child_id)
-- insert only new rows into the table
AND NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM organizations_path_enum AS o3
WHERE o1.parent_id = o3.parent_id AND r1.child_id = o3.child_id);

oldsize := newsize;
SELECT COUNT(*) INTO newsize FROM organizations_path_enum;
END LOOP;
END;

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks!

Charles Munat
Seattle

#2Tom Lane
tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
In reply to: Chas. Munat (#1)
Re: PL/pgSQL graph enumeration function hangs

"Charles F. Munat" <chas@munat.com> writes:

Using pseudocode from Celko's "SQL for Smarties" book, I wrote the
following function that builds a path enumeration table. I hope to
trigger this function on the rare occasions that the organizations table
is updated. But when I run this function, it hangs.

I think there might be something wrong with this query:

INSERT INTO organizations_path_enum
SELECT o1.parent_id, r1.child_id, (o1.depth + 1)
FROM organizations_path_enum o1, relationships r1
-- advance existing paths by one level
WHERE EXISTS (SELECT * FROM organizations_path_enum AS o2
WHERE r1.parent_id = o2.child_id)
-- insert only new rows into the table
AND NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM organizations_path_enum AS o3
WHERE o1.parent_id = o3.parent_id AND r1.child_id = o3.child_id);

I'm not totally clear on what this is supposed to accomplish, but
it seems like there should be some join clause between o1 and r1.

regards, tom lane

#3Chas. Munat
chas@munat.com
In reply to: Tom Lane (#2)
Re: PL/pgSQL graph enumeration function hangs

Thanks, but the join clause is there, it's just buried in the subqueries.

If there is a problem, it is probably that the loop never ends.

Or it could be that the answer is exponential, and I just have too many
rows in the source table and too deep a graph.

I figured out how to do it in the application with one call to the
database and a simple recursive method in a class, though, so I'm not
going to use a stored function in the DB.

Thanks again for responding.

Chas.

Tom Lane wrote:

Show quoted text

"Charles F. Munat" <chas@munat.com> writes:

Using pseudocode from Celko's "SQL for Smarties" book, I wrote the
following function that builds a path enumeration table. I hope to
trigger this function on the rare occasions that the organizations table
is updated. But when I run this function, it hangs.

I think there might be something wrong with this query:

INSERT INTO organizations_path_enum
SELECT o1.parent_id, r1.child_id, (o1.depth + 1)
FROM organizations_path_enum o1, relationships r1
-- advance existing paths by one level
WHERE EXISTS (SELECT * FROM organizations_path_enum AS o2
WHERE r1.parent_id = o2.child_id)
-- insert only new rows into the table
AND NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM organizations_path_enum AS o3
WHERE o1.parent_id = o3.parent_id AND r1.child_id = o3.child_id);

I'm not totally clear on what this is supposed to accomplish, but
it seems like there should be some join clause between o1 and r1.

regards, tom lane

#4Tino Wildenhain
tino@wildenhain.de
In reply to: Chas. Munat (#3)
Re: PL/pgSQL graph enumeration function hangs

Charles F. Munat wrote:

Thanks, but the join clause is there, it's just buried in the subqueries.

If there is a problem, it is probably that the loop never ends.

Or it could be that the answer is exponential, and I just have too many
rows in the source table and too deep a graph.

I figured out how to do it in the application with one call to the
database and a simple recursive method in a class, though, so I'm not
going to use a stored function in the DB.

If you have figured it out this way you can even use one of the
PL/languages to implement it within the database :-)

Cheers
Tino