GiST comment improvement

Started by Bruce Momjianalmost 5 years ago4 messages
#1Bruce Momjian
bruce@momjian.us
1 attachment(s)

In talking to Teodor this week, I have written the attached C comment
patch which improves our description of GiST's NSN and GistBuildLSN
values.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> https://momjian.us
EDB https://enterprisedb.com

The usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness, Bruce Lee

Attachments:

gist.difftext/x-diff; charset=us-asciiDownload
From defd16776c8016179a87c3d32ed359570c62727d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2021 11:38:14 -0500
Subject: [PATCH] gist squash commit

---
 src/backend/access/gist/README |  1 +
 src/include/access/gist.h      | 15 +++++++++++----
 2 files changed, 12 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/src/backend/access/gist/README b/src/backend/access/gist/README
index 8ca0cf78cc..25cab0047b 100644
--- a/src/backend/access/gist/README
+++ b/src/backend/access/gist/README
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ GiST stands for Generalized Search Tree. It was introduced in the seminal paper
 Jeffrey F. Naughton, Avi Pfeffer:
 
     http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/postgres/gist/papers/gist.ps
+    https://dsf.berkeley.edu/papers/sigmod97-gist.pdf
 
 and implemented by J. Hellerstein and P. Aoki in an early version of
 PostgreSQL (more details are available from The GiST Indexing Project
diff --git a/src/include/access/gist.h b/src/include/access/gist.h
index aa5f1763dd..4b06575d98 100644
--- a/src/include/access/gist.h
+++ b/src/include/access/gist.h
@@ -51,13 +51,20 @@
 #define F_HAS_GARBAGE		(1 << 4)	/* some tuples on the page are dead,
 										 * but not deleted yet */
 
-/* NSN - node sequence number, a special-purpose LSN */
+/*
+ * NSN (node sequence number) is a special-purpose LSN which is stored on each
+ * index page in GISTPageOpaqueData and updated only during page splits.  By
+ * recording the parent's LSN in GISTSearchItem.parentlsn, it is possible to
+ * detect concurrent child page splits by checking if parentlsn < child's NSN,
+ * and handle them properly.  The child page's LSN is insufficient for this
+ * purpose since it is updated for every page change.
+ */
 typedef XLogRecPtr GistNSN;
 
 /*
- * A bogus LSN / NSN value used during index build. Must be smaller than any
- * real or fake unlogged LSN, so that after an index build finishes, all the
- * splits are considered completed.
+ * A fake LSN / NSN value used during index builds. Must be smaller than any
+ * real or fake (unlogged) LSN generated after the index build completes so
+ * that all splits are considered complete.
  */
 #define GistBuildLSN	((XLogRecPtr) 1)
 
-- 
2.20.1

#2Andrey Borodin
x4mmm@yandex-team.ru
In reply to: Bruce Momjian (#1)
Re: GiST comment improvement

2 марта 2021 г., в 21:40, Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> написал(а):

In talking to Teodor this week, I have written the attached C comment
patch which improves our description of GiST's NSN and GistBuildLSN
values.

I'd suggest also add NSN acronym description to Concurrency section of src/backend/access/gist/README. And maybe even to doc/src/sgml/acronyms.sgml. Just for connectivity.

Thanks!

Best regards, Andrey Borodin.

#3Bruce Momjian
bruce@momjian.us
In reply to: Andrey Borodin (#2)
Re: GiST comment improvement

On Tue, Mar 2, 2021 at 10:25:23PM +0500, Andrey Borodin wrote:

2 марта 2021 г., в 21:40, Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> написал(а):

In talking to Teodor this week, I have written the attached C comment
patch which improves our description of GiST's NSN and GistBuildLSN
values.

I'd suggest also add NSN acronym description to Concurrency section of src/backend/access/gist/README. And maybe even to doc/src/sgml/acronyms.sgml. Just for connectivity.

Uh, NSN is only something that exists in the source code. Do we document
those cases?

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> https://momjian.us
EDB https://enterprisedb.com

The usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness, Bruce Lee

#4Bruce Momjian
bruce@momjian.us
In reply to: Bruce Momjian (#1)
Re: GiST comment improvement

On Tue, Mar 2, 2021 at 11:40:21AM -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:

In talking to Teodor this week, I have written the attached C comment
patch which improves our description of GiST's NSN and GistBuildLSN
values.

Patch applied.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> https://momjian.us
EDB https://enterprisedb.com

The usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness, Bruce Lee