Slow GRANT ROLE on PostgreSQL 16 with thousands of ROLEs
Hello,
we run multiple versions of PostgreSQL instances on production. Some time ago
we add new physical servers and decided to go with latest GA from pgdg APT
repository, that is PostgreSQL 16.
We encounter slow `GRANT ROLES` only on PostgreSQL 16 instances up to 42 seconds
in production, the client process at PostgresSQL would use 100% of the CPU.
Which is a surprise compared to other instances running older PostgreSQL
releases. On production we have a *LOT* of ROLEs, which unfortunately a case
that we did not test before switching the new servers into production mode.
The Application & ROLEs
-----------------------
Our application make use of ROLEs. We create group ROLEs for each tenant of our
application, these ROLEs are named with `d_` and `a_` prefix.
A special ROLE, called `acc`, it will be a member to each of these `d_` and
`a_` ROLEs.
The application have a concept of "session", which it would mantain and I think
outside the scope of this e-mail. In relation to PostgreSQL, the application
would create a PostgreSQL ROLE that corresponds to its own (application)
session. It would name these ROLEs with `s_` prefix, which CREATEd and
GRANTed its permission on every application's "session".
When an application "session" started, user with `acc` ROLE would grant
membersip of `d_` ROLE to `s_` ROLE (ie. GRANT ROLE `d_xxxx` TO `s_xxxx`;)
To make this clear, for example, we have (say) role `d_202402` already existing
and application would create a new ROLE `s_0000001` which corresponds to
application's "session". Application that connects with special ROLE `acc`
would GRANT ROLE `d_202402` to the ROLE `s_0000001`, like so:
GRANT d_202402 TO s_0000001;
In production we have up to 13 thousands of these ROLEs, each:
$ sudo -u postgres psql -p 5531
psql (16.2 (Debian 16.2-1.pgdg120+2))
Type "help" for help.
postgres=# select count(*) s_roles_count from pg_catalog.pg_authid
where rolname like 's_%';
s_roles_count
---------------
13299
(1 row)
postgres=# select count(*) a_roles_count from pg_catalog.pg_authid
where rolname like 'a_%';
a_roles_count
---------------
12776
(1 row)
postgres=# select count(*) d_roles_count from pg_catalog.pg_authid
where rolname like 'd_%';
d_roles_count
---------------
13984
(1 row)
The Setup
---------
Investigating this slow `GRANT ROLE` we start a VM running Debian 11,
and create a lot of roles.
create special `acc` role and write to some file:
$ echo -e "CREATE ROLE acc WITH LOGIN NOSUPERUSER INHERIT CREATEDB
CREATEROLE NOREPLICATION;\n\n" > create_acc.sql
create a lot of `a_` roles and make sure `acc` is member of each one of them:
$ for idx1 in $(seq -w 1 100); do for idx2 in $(seq -w 1 12); do for
idx3 in $(seq -w 1 10); do echo "CREATE ROLE a_${idx1}${idx2}${idx3}
WITH NOSUPERUSER NOCREATEDB NOCREATEROLE INHERIT LOGIN;"; echo "GRANT
a_${idx1}${idx2}${idx3} TO acc WITH ADMIN OPTION;"; done; done; done >
create_a.sql
create a lot of `d_` roles and make sure `acc` is member of each one of them:
$ for idx1 in $(seq -w 1 100); do for idx2 in $(seq -w 1 12); do for
idx3 in $(seq -w 1 10); do echo "CREATE ROLE d_${idx1}${idx2}${idx3}
WITH NOSUPERUSER NOCREATEDB NOCREATEROLE INHERIT LOGIN;"; echo "GRANT
d_${idx1}${idx2}${idx3} TO acc WITH ADMIN OPTION;"; done; done; done >
create_d.sql
create a lot of `s_` roles:
$ for idx1 in $(seq -w 1 100); do for idx2 in $(seq -w 1 12); do for
idx3 in $(seq -w 1 10); do echo "CREATE ROLE s_${idx1}${idx2}${idx3}
WITH NOSUPERUSER NOCREATEDB NOCREATEROLE INHERIT LOGIN;"; done; done;
done > create_s.sql
merge ROLE creation into one file:
$ cat create_acc.sql create_a.sql create_d.sql create_s.sql >
/tmp/create-roles.sql
PostgreSQL 16
-------------
Install PostgreSQL 16:
--
$ sudo sh -c 'echo "deb https://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt
$(lsb_release -cs)-pgdg main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pgdg.list'
$ sudo apt install gnupg2
$ wget --quiet -O - https://www.postgresql.org/media/keys/ACCC4CF8.asc
| sudo apt-key add -
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get -y install postgresql-16 postgresql-client-16
Create PostgreSQL 16 instance:
--
$ sudo pg_dropcluster --stop 16 main # drop default Debian cluster
$ sudo pg_createcluster 16 pg16
$ echo "local all acc trust" | sudo tee
/etc/postgresql/16/pg16/pg_hba.conf
$ echo "local all postgres peer" | sudo tee -a
/etc/postgresql/16/pg16/pg_hba.conf
$ sudo systemctl start postgresql@16-pg16.service
Import lots of roles:
--
$ sudo -u postgres /usr/lib/postgresql/16/bin/psql -f
/tmp/create-roles.sql -p 5432 -d postgres
Using ROLE `acc`, grant `d_` ROLE to a session ROLE:
--
$ time sudo -u postgres /usr/lib/postgresql/16/bin/psql -U acc
postgres -c 'GRANT d_0010109 TO s_0010109;'
GRANT ROLE
real 0m7.579s
user 0m0.054s
sys 0m0.020s
This is the surprising behavior for PostgreSQL 16. It seems there's a new logic
in PostgreSQL that checks against each role, and it took 100% of CPU.
At this point we know `acc` is just another ROLE that happens to have ADMIN
privilege that is a member of `d_0010109` group ROLE.
But what happens when `acc` is a SUPERUSER?
Alter role `acc` as SUPERUSER:
--
$ sudo -u postgres /usr/lib/postgresql/16/bin/psql -c 'ALTER ROLE acc
WITH SUPERUSER'
ALTER ROLE
This is a workaround to make GRANT ROLE bearable.
Using ROLE `acc`, grant `d_` ROLE to a session ROLE, again:
--
$ time sudo -u postgres /usr/lib/postgresql/16/bin/psql -U acc
postgres -c 'GRANT d_0010108 TO s_0010108;'
GRANT ROLE
real 0m0.079s
user 0m0.054s
sys 0m0.019s
OK this is fast.
But what hapens when `acc` is back being not a SUPERUSER?
Alter role `acc` to stop being SUPERUSER:
--
$ sudo -u postgres psql -c 'ALTER ROLE acc WITH NOSUPERUSER'
ALTER ROLE
Using ROLE `acc`, grant `d_` ROLE to a session ROLE with `acc` not a SUPERUSER:
--
$ time sudo -u postgres /usr/lib/postgresql/16/bin/psql -U acc
postgres -c 'GRANT d_0010107 TO s_0010107;'
GRANT ROLE
real 0m7.741s
user 0m0.055s
sys 0m0.021s
As expected, slow `GRANT ROLE` again.
At this point, we try with PostgreSQL 15 just to make sure that this
is new to PostgreSQL 16.
$ sudo systemctl stop postgresql@16-pg16
PostgreSQL 15
-------------
Install PostgreSQL 15:
--
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get -y install postgresql-15 postgresql-client-15
$ sudo pg_dropcluster --stop 15 main # drop default Debian cluster
$ sudo pg_createcluster 15 pg15
$ echo "local all acc trust" | sudo tee
/etc/postgresql/15/pg15/pg_hba.conf
$ echo "local all postgres peer" | sudo tee -a
/etc/postgresql/15/pg15/pg_hba.conf
$ sudo systemctl start postgresql@15-pg15.service
Import lots of roles:
--
$ sudo -u postgres /usr/lib/postgresql/15/bin/psql -f
/tmp/create-roles.sql -p 5433 -d postgres
Using ROLE `acc`, grant `d_` ROLE to a session ROLE:
--
$ time sudo -u postgres /usr/lib/postgresql/15/bin/psql -U acc -p 5433
postgres -c 'GRANT d_0010109 TO s_0010109;'
GRANT ROLE
real 0m0.077s
user 0m0.054s
sys 0m0.017s
Seems OK with the same amount of ROLEs. The `acc` ROLE is not a SUPERUSER here.
Alter role `acc` as SUPERUSER:
--
$ sudo -u postgres /usr/lib/postgresql/15/bin/psql -p 5433 -c 'ALTER
ROLE acc WITH SUPERUSER'
ALTER ROLE
Using ROLE `acc`, grant `d_` ROLE to a session ROLE, again:
--
$ time sudo -u postgres /usr/lib/postgresql/15/bin/psql -p 5433 -U acc
postgres -c 'GRANT d_0010108 TO s_0010108;'
GRANT ROLE
real 0m0.084s
user 0m0.057s
sys 0m0.021s
Doesn't matter, GRANT ROLE works still as fast.
Alter role `acc` to stop being a SUPERUSER:
--
$ sudo -u postgres /usr/lib/postgresql/15/bin/psql -p 5433 -c 'ALTER
ROLE acc WITH NOSUPERUSER'
ALTER ROLE
Using ROLE `acc`, grant `d_` ROLE to a session ROLE with `acc` not a SUPERUSER:
--
$ time sudo -u postgres /usr/lib/postgresql/15/bin/psql -p 5433 -U acc
postgres -c 'GRANT d_0010107 TO s_0010107;'
GRANT ROLE
real 0m0.077s
user 0m0.054s
sys 0m0.017s
Again, doesn't matter, GRANT ROLE works still as fast.
Looking At The Source Code
--------------------------
Looking at git diff of `REL_15_6` against `REL_16_0`, it seems the
`roles_is_member_of` function called by the new in PostgreSQL 16
`check_role_membership_authorization`
is expensive for our use case.
REL_16_0: src/backend/commands/user.c:1562
---8<------
(errcode(ERRCODE_INVALID_GRANT_OPERATION),
errmsg("column names cannot be included in GRANT/REVOKE ROLE")));
roleid = get_role_oid(rolename, false);
check_role_membership_authorization(currentUserId,
roleid, stmt->is_grant);
if (stmt->is_grant)
--->8------
While I can see the value in improvements on how ROLEs are being handled
PostgreSQL 16 onward, I'm curious what would help for setups that has thousands
of ROLEs like us outside of patching the source code?
On Thu, Mar 21, 2024 at 8:10 AM alex work <alexwork033@gmail.com> wrote:
We encounter slow `GRANT ROLES` only on PostgreSQL 16 instances up to 42
seconds
in production, the client process at PostgresSQL would use 100% of the
CPU. [...]
Using ROLE `acc`, grant `d_` ROLE to a session ROLE:
real 0m7.579s [...]
PostgreSQL 15
Using ROLE `acc`, grant `d_` ROLE to a session ROLE:
real 0m0.077s
Ouch, that's a ~ 100x regression. Thanks for the write-up, that's worrying.
We don't have as many ROLEs, but we do have plenty, so this is worrying.
On top of the v16 ROLE changes breaking on ROLE logic, which was fine prior
(v12-v15).
We've paused for now our planned v16 upgrade, until we have more time to
adapt.
Like you, I welcome the changes. But it turns out more expensive to adapt
to them.
And your report certainly makes me wonder whether we should hold off until
that perf regression is addressed.
Thanks, --DD
[ redirecting to -hackers ]
alex work <alexwork033@gmail.com> writes:
We encounter slow `GRANT ROLES` only on PostgreSQL 16 instances up to 42 seconds
in production, the client process at PostgresSQL would use 100% of the CPU.
Which is a surprise compared to other instances running older PostgreSQL
releases. On production we have a *LOT* of ROLEs, which unfortunately a case
that we did not test before switching the new servers into production mode.
I poked into this a bit. It seems the problem is that as of v16, we
try to search for the "best" role membership path from the current
user to the target role, and that's done in a very brute-force way,
as a side effect of computing the set of *all* role memberships the
current role has. In the given case, we could have skipped all that
if we simply tested whether the current role is directly a member
of the target: it is, so there can't be any shorter path. But in
any case roles_is_member_of has horrid performance when the current
role is a member of a lot of roles.
It looks like part of the blame might be ascribable to catcache.c,
as if you look at the problem microscopically you find that
roles_is_member_of is causing catcache to make a ton of AUTHMEMMEMROLE
catcache lists, and SearchSysCacheList is just iterating linearly
through the cache's list-of-lists, so that search is where the O(N^2)
time is actually getting taken. Up to now that code has assumed that
any one catcache would not have very many catcache lists. Maybe it's
time to make that smarter; but since we've gotten away with this
implementation for decades, I can't help feeling that the real issue
is with roles_is_member_of's usage pattern.
For self-containedness, attached is a directly usable shell script
to reproduce the problem. The complaint is that the last GRANT
takes multiple seconds (about 5s on my machine), rather than
milliseconds.
regards, tom lane
Attachments:
grant_with_many_roles.shtext/x-shellscript; charset=us-ascii; name=grant_with_many_roles.shDownload
I wrote:
I poked into this a bit. It seems the problem is that as of v16, we
try to search for the "best" role membership path from the current
user to the target role, and that's done in a very brute-force way,
as a side effect of computing the set of *all* role memberships the
current role has.
Actually, roles_is_member_of sucks before v16 too; the new thing
is only that it's being invoked during GRANT ROLE. Using the
roles created by the given test case, I see in v15:
$ psql
psql (15.6)
Type "help" for help.
regression=# drop table at;
DROP TABLE
regression=# set role a_0010308;
SET
regression=> create table at(f1 int);
CREATE TABLE
regression=> \timing
Timing is on.
regression=> set role acc;
SET
Time: 0.493 ms
regression=> insert into at values(1);
INSERT 0 1
Time: 3565.029 ms (00:03.565)
regression=> insert into at values(1);
INSERT 0 1
Time: 2.308 ms
So it takes ~3.5s to populate the roles_is_member_of cache for "acc"
given this membership set. This is actually considerably worse than
in v16 or HEAD, where the same test takes about 1.6s for me.
Apparently the OP has designed their use-case so that they dodge these
implementation problems in v15 and earlier, but that's a far cry from
saying that there were no problems with lots-o-roles before v16.
regards, tom lane
Tom Lane:
Actually, roles_is_member_of sucks before v16 too; the new thing
is only that it's being invoked during GRANT ROLE. Using the
roles created by the given test case, I see in v15:[...]
So it takes ~3.5s to populate the roles_is_member_of cache for "acc"
given this membership set. This is actually considerably worse than
in v16 or HEAD, where the same test takes about 1.6s for me.
Ah, this reminds me that I hit the same problem about a year ago, but
haven't had the time to put together a test-case, yet. In my case, it's
like this:
- I have one role "authenticator" with which the application (PostgREST)
connects to the database.
- This role has been granted all of the actual user roles and will then
do a SET ROLE for each authenticated request it handles.
- In my case that's currently about 120k roles granted to
"authenticator", back then it was probably around 60k.
- The first request (SET ROLE) for each session took between 5 and 10
*minutes* to succeed - subsequent requests were instant.
- When the "authenticator" role is made SUPERUSER, the first request is
instant, too.
I guess this matches exactly what you are observing.
There is one more thing that is actually even worse, though: When you
try to cancel the query or terminate the backend while the SET ROLE is
still running, this will not work. It will not only not cancel the
query, but somehow leave the process for that backend in some kind of
zombie state that is impossible to recover from.
All of this was v15.
Best,
Wolfgang
I wrote:
It looks like part of the blame might be ascribable to catcache.c,
as if you look at the problem microscopically you find that
roles_is_member_of is causing catcache to make a ton of AUTHMEMMEMROLE
catcache lists, and SearchSysCacheList is just iterating linearly
through the cache's list-of-lists, so that search is where the O(N^2)
time is actually getting taken. Up to now that code has assumed that
any one catcache would not have very many catcache lists. Maybe it's
time to make that smarter; but since we've gotten away with this
implementation for decades, I can't help feeling that the real issue
is with roles_is_member_of's usage pattern.
I wrote a quick finger exercise to make catcache.c use a hash table
instead of a single list for CatCLists, modeling it closely on the
existing hash logic for simple catcache entries. This helps a good
deal, but I still see the problematic GRANT taking ~250ms, compared
to 5ms in v15. roles_is_member_of is clearly on the hook for that.
regards, tom lane
Attachments:
v1-use-hash-table-for-CatCLists.patchtext/x-diff; charset=us-ascii; name=v1-use-hash-table-for-CatCLists.patchDownload+124-25
I wrote:
... I still see the problematic GRANT taking ~250ms, compared
to 5ms in v15. roles_is_member_of is clearly on the hook for that.
Ah: looks like that is mainly the fault of the list_append_unique_oid
calls in roles_is_member_of. That's also an O(N^2) cost of course,
though with a much smaller constant factor.
I don't think we have any really cheap way to de-duplicate the role
OIDs, especially seeing that it has to be done on-the-fly within the
collection loop, and the order of roles_list is at least potentially
interesting. Not sure how to make further progress without a lot of
work.
regards, tom lane
On Thu, Mar 21, 2024 at 04:31:45PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
I wrote:
... I still see the problematic GRANT taking ~250ms, compared
to 5ms in v15. roles_is_member_of is clearly on the hook for that.Ah: looks like that is mainly the fault of the list_append_unique_oid
calls in roles_is_member_of. That's also an O(N^2) cost of course,
though with a much smaller constant factor.I don't think we have any really cheap way to de-duplicate the role
OIDs, especially seeing that it has to be done on-the-fly within the
collection loop, and the order of roles_list is at least potentially
interesting. Not sure how to make further progress without a lot of
work.
Assuming these are larger lists, this might benefit from optimizations
involving SIMD intrinsics. I looked into that a while ago [0]/messages/by-id/20230308002502.GA3378449@nathanxps13, but the
effort was abandoned because we didn't have any concrete use-cases at the
time. (I'm looking into some additional optimizations in a separate thread
[1]: /messages/by-id/20240321183823.GA1800896@nathanxps13
[0]: /messages/by-id/20230308002502.GA3378449@nathanxps13
[1]: /messages/by-id/20240321183823.GA1800896@nathanxps13
--
Nathan Bossart
Amazon Web Services: https://aws.amazon.com
On Thu, Mar 21, 2024 at 03:40:12PM -0500, Nathan Bossart wrote:
On Thu, Mar 21, 2024 at 04:31:45PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
I don't think we have any really cheap way to de-duplicate the role
OIDs, especially seeing that it has to be done on-the-fly within the
collection loop, and the order of roles_list is at least potentially
interesting. Not sure how to make further progress without a lot of
work.Assuming these are larger lists, this might benefit from optimizations
involving SIMD intrinsics. I looked into that a while ago [0], but the
effort was abandoned because we didn't have any concrete use-cases at the
time. (I'm looking into some additional optimizations in a separate thread
[1] that would likely apply here, too.)
Never mind. With the reproduction script, I'm only seeing a ~2%
improvement with my patches.
--
Nathan Bossart
Amazon Web Services: https://aws.amazon.com
Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com> writes:
On Thu, Mar 21, 2024 at 03:40:12PM -0500, Nathan Bossart wrote:
On Thu, Mar 21, 2024 at 04:31:45PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
I don't think we have any really cheap way to de-duplicate the role
OIDs, especially seeing that it has to be done on-the-fly within the
collection loop, and the order of roles_list is at least potentially
interesting. Not sure how to make further progress without a lot of
work.
Assuming these are larger lists, this might benefit from optimizations
involving SIMD intrinsics.
Never mind. With the reproduction script, I'm only seeing a ~2%
improvement with my patches.
Yeah, you cannot beat an O(N^2) problem by throwing SIMD at it.
However ... I just remembered that we have a Bloom filter implementation
in core now (src/backend/lib/bloomfilter.c). How about using that
to quickly reject (hopefully) most role OIDs, and only do the
list_member_oid check if the filter passes?
regards, tom lane
On Thu, Mar 21, 2024 at 08:59:54PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
However ... I just remembered that we have a Bloom filter implementation
in core now (src/backend/lib/bloomfilter.c). How about using that
to quickly reject (hopefully) most role OIDs, and only do the
list_member_oid check if the filter passes?
Seems worth a try. I've been looking for an excuse to use that...
--
Nathan Bossart
Amazon Web Services: https://aws.amazon.com
On Thu, Mar 21, 2024 at 08:03:32PM -0500, Nathan Bossart wrote:
On Thu, Mar 21, 2024 at 08:59:54PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
However ... I just remembered that we have a Bloom filter implementation
in core now (src/backend/lib/bloomfilter.c). How about using that
to quickly reject (hopefully) most role OIDs, and only do the
list_member_oid check if the filter passes?Seems worth a try. I've been looking for an excuse to use that...
The Bloom filter appears to help a bit, although it regresses the
create-roles.sql portion of the test. I'm assuming that's thanks to all
the extra pallocs and pfrees, which are probably avoidable if we store the
filter in a long-lived context and just clear it at the beginning of each
call to roles_is_member_of().
HEAD hash hash+bloom
create 2.02 2.06 2.92
grant 4.63 0.27 0.08
--
Nathan Bossart
Amazon Web Services: https://aws.amazon.com
Attachments:
bloom.patchtext/x-diff; charset=us-asciiDownload+21-3
First of all thank you for looking into this.
At the moment we workaround the problem by altering `acc` ROLE into a SUPERUSER
in PostgreSQL 16 instances. It sidestep the problem and having the lowest cost
to implement for us. While at first we think this feels like opening a security
hole, it does not introduce side effects for **our use case** by the way our
application make use of this `acc` ROLE.
Of course we cannot recommend the workaround we took to others having similar
situation.
Show quoted text
On Fri, Mar 22, 2024 at 7:59 AM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com> writes:
On Thu, Mar 21, 2024 at 03:40:12PM -0500, Nathan Bossart wrote:
On Thu, Mar 21, 2024 at 04:31:45PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
I don't think we have any really cheap way to de-duplicate the role
OIDs, especially seeing that it has to be done on-the-fly within the
collection loop, and the order of roles_list is at least potentially
interesting. Not sure how to make further progress without a lot of
work.Assuming these are larger lists, this might benefit from optimizations
involving SIMD intrinsics.Never mind. With the reproduction script, I'm only seeing a ~2%
improvement with my patches.Yeah, you cannot beat an O(N^2) problem by throwing SIMD at it.
However ... I just remembered that we have a Bloom filter implementation
in core now (src/backend/lib/bloomfilter.c). How about using that
to quickly reject (hopefully) most role OIDs, and only do the
list_member_oid check if the filter passes?regards, tom lane
Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com> writes:
The Bloom filter appears to help a bit, although it regresses the
create-roles.sql portion of the test. I'm assuming that's thanks to all
the extra pallocs and pfrees, which are probably avoidable if we store the
filter in a long-lived context and just clear it at the beginning of each
call to roles_is_member_of().
The zero-fill to reinitialize the filter probably costs a good deal
all by itself, considering we're talking about at least a megabyte.
Maybe a better idea is to not enable the filter till we're dealing
with at least 1000 or so entries in roles_list, though obviously that
will complicate the logic.
+ if (bloom_lacks_element(bf, (unsigned char *) &otherid, sizeof(Oid)))
+ roles_list = lappend_oid(roles_list, otherid);
+ else
+ roles_list = list_append_unique_oid(roles_list, otherid);
+ bloom_add_element(bf, (unsigned char *) &otherid, sizeof(Oid));
Hmm, I was imagining something more like
if (bloom_lacks_element(bf, (unsigned char *) &otherid, sizeof(Oid)) ||
!list_member_oid(roles_list, otherid))
{
roles_list = lappend_oid(roles_list, otherid);
bloom_add_element(bf, (unsigned char *) &otherid, sizeof(Oid));
}
to avoid duplicate bloom_add_element calls. Probably wouldn't move
the needle much in this specific test case, but this formulation
would simplify letting the filter kick in later. Very roughly,
if ((bf && bloom_lacks_element(bf, (unsigned char *) &otherid, sizeof(Oid))) ||
!list_member_oid(roles_list, otherid))
{
if (bf == NULL && list_length(roles_list) > 1000)
{
... create bf and populate with existing list entries
}
roles_list = lappend_oid(roles_list, otherid);
if (bf)
bloom_add_element(bf, (unsigned char *) &otherid, sizeof(Oid));
}
regards, tom lane
On Thu, Mar 21, 2024 at 08:59:54PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com> writes:
On Thu, Mar 21, 2024 at 03:40:12PM -0500, Nathan Bossart wrote:
On Thu, Mar 21, 2024 at 04:31:45PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
I don't think we have any really cheap way to de-duplicate the role
OIDs, especially seeing that it has to be done on-the-fly within the
collection loop, and the order of roles_list is at least potentially
interesting. Not sure how to make further progress without a lot of
work.Assuming these are larger lists, this might benefit from optimizations
involving SIMD intrinsics.Never mind. With the reproduction script, I'm only seeing a ~2%
improvement with my patches.Yeah, you cannot beat an O(N^2) problem by throwing SIMD at it.
I apparently had some sort of major brain fade when I did this because I
didn't apply your hashing patch when I ran this SIMD test. With it
applied, I see a speedup of ~39%, which makes a whole lot more sense to me.
If I add the Bloom patch (updated with your suggestions), I get another
~73% improvement from there, and a much smaller regression in the role
creation portion.
hash hash+simd hash+simd+bloom
create 1.27 1.27 1.28
grant 0.18 0.11 0.03
--
Nathan Bossart
Amazon Web Services: https://aws.amazon.com
Attachments:
bloom_v2.patchtext/x-diff; charset=us-asciiDownload+35-3
On Fri, Mar 22, 2024 at 09:47:39AM -0500, Nathan Bossart wrote:
hash hash+simd hash+simd+bloom
create 1.27 1.27 1.28
grant 0.18 0.11 0.03
For just hash+bloom, I'm seeing 1.29 and 0.04.
--
Nathan Bossart
Amazon Web Services: https://aws.amazon.com
Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com> writes:
On Fri, Mar 22, 2024 at 09:47:39AM -0500, Nathan Bossart wrote:
hash hash+simd hash+simd+bloom
create 1.27 1.27 1.28
grant 0.18 0.11 0.03
For just hash+bloom, I'm seeing 1.29 and 0.04.
Yeah, that's about what I'd expect: hash+bloom ought to remove
most (not quite all) of the opportunity for simd to shine, because
the bloom filter should eliminate most of the list_member_oid calls.
Possibly we could fix that small regression in the create phase
with more careful tuning of the magic constants in the bloom
logic? Although I'd kind of expect that the create step doesn't
ever invoke the bloom filter, else it would have been showing a
performance problem before; so this might not be a good test case
for helping us tune those.
I think remaining questions are:
* Is there any case where the new hash catcache logic could lose
measurably? I kind of doubt it, because we were already computing
the hash value for list searches; so basically the only overhead
is one more palloc per cache during the first list search. (If
you accumulate enough lists to cause a rehash, you're almost
surely well into winning territory.)
* Same question for the bloom logic, but here I think it's mostly
a matter of tuning those constants.
* Do we want to risk back-patching any of this, to fix the performance
regression in v16? I think that the OP's situation is a pretty
narrow one, but maybe he's not the only person who managed to dodge
roles_is_member_of's performance issues in most other cases.
regards, tom lane
On Fri, Mar 22, 2024 at 11:27:46AM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
Yeah, that's about what I'd expect: hash+bloom ought to remove
most (not quite all) of the opportunity for simd to shine, because
the bloom filter should eliminate most of the list_member_oid calls.
Right. IMHO the SIMD work is still worth considering because there are
probably even more extreme cases where it'll make a decent amount of
difference. Plus, that stuff is pretty low overhead for what you get in
return. That being said, the hash table and Bloom filter should definitely
be the higher priority.
* Same question for the bloom logic, but here I think it's mostly
a matter of tuning those constants.
I suspect there might be some regressions just after the point where we
construct the filter, but I'd still expect that to be a reasonable
trade-off. We could probably pretty easily construct some benchmarks to
understand the impact with a given number of roles. (I'm not sure I'll be
able to get to that today.)
* Do we want to risk back-patching any of this, to fix the performance
regression in v16? I think that the OP's situation is a pretty
narrow one, but maybe he's not the only person who managed to dodge
roles_is_member_of's performance issues in most other cases.
I've heard complaints about performance with many roles before, so I
certainly think this area is worth optimizing. As far as back-patching
goes, my current feeling is that the hash table is probably pretty safe and
provides the majority of the benefit, but anything fancier should probably
be reserved for v17 or v18.
--
Nathan Bossart
Amazon Web Services: https://aws.amazon.com
Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com> writes:
On Fri, Mar 22, 2024 at 11:27:46AM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
* Do we want to risk back-patching any of this, to fix the performance
regression in v16? I think that the OP's situation is a pretty
narrow one, but maybe he's not the only person who managed to dodge
roles_is_member_of's performance issues in most other cases.
I've heard complaints about performance with many roles before, so I
certainly think this area is worth optimizing. As far as back-patching
goes, my current feeling is that the hash table is probably pretty safe and
provides the majority of the benefit, but anything fancier should probably
be reserved for v17 or v18.
Yeah. Although both the catcache and list_append_unique_oid bits
are O(N^2), the catcache seems to have a much bigger constant
factor --- when I did a "perf" check on the unpatched code,
I saw catcache eating over 90% of the runtime and list_member_oid
about 2%. So let's fix that part in v16 and call it a day.
It should be safe to back-patch the catcache changes as long as
we put the new fields at the end of the struct and leave cc_lists
present but empty.
Would you like to review the catcache patch further, or do you
think it's good to go?
regards, tom lane
On Fri, Mar 22, 2024 at 12:53:15PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
Would you like to review the catcache patch further, or do you
think it's good to go?
I'll take another look this afternoon.
--
Nathan Bossart
Amazon Web Services: https://aws.amazon.com