Pg big fast ugly acid

PostgreSQL, The Big, The Fast
and The (NOSQL on ) Acid
Federico Campoli
09 Jan 2016
Federico Campoli PostgreSQL, The Big, The Fast and The (NOSQL on ) Acid 09 Jan 2016 1 / 40

Table of contents
1 The Big
2 The Fast
3 The (NOSQL on) Acid
4 Wrap up

Table of contents
1 The Big
2 The Fast
4 Wrap up

The Big
Image by Caitlin - https://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/lizard queen

PostgreSQL, an history of excellence
Created at Berkeley in 1982 by database’s legend Prof. Stonebraker
In the 1994 Andrew Yu and Jolly Chen added the SQL interpreter
In the 1996 becomes an Open Source project.
The project’s name changes in PostgreSQL

Fully ACID compliant
High performance in read/write with the MVCC
Tablespaces

Tablespaces
Runs on almost any unix ﬂavour
From the version 8.0 is native on *cough* MS Windows *cough*
HA with hot standby and streaming replication
Heterogeneous federation

Tablespaces
Runs on almost any unix ﬂavour
From the version 8.0 is native on *cough* MS Windows *cough*
HA with hot standby and streaming replication
Heterogeneous federation
Procedural languages (pl/pgsql, pl/python, pl/perl...)
Support for NOSQL features like HSTORE and JSON

Development
Old ugly C language
New development cycle starts usually in June
New version released usually by the end of the year
At least 4 LTS versions
Can be extended using shared libraries
Extensions (from the version9.1)
BSD like license

Limits
Database size. No limits.
Table size, 32 TB
Row size 1.6 TB
Rows in table. No limits.
Fields in table 250 - 1600 depending on data type.
Tables in a database. No limits.

Data types
Alongside the general purpose data types PostgreSQL have some exotic types.
Range (integers, date)
Geometric (points, lines etc.)
Network addresses
XML
JSON
HSTORE (extension)

Surprise surprise!
PostgreSQL 9.5, UPSERT, Row Level Security, and Big Data
Release date: 2016-01-07
UPSERT aka INSERT, ON CONFLICT UPDATE
Row Level Security, allows security ”policies” which ﬁlter which rows
particular users are allowed to update or view.
BIG DATA!
BRIN - Block Range Indices
CUBE, ROLLUP and GROUPING SETS
IMPORT FOREIGN SCHEMA
TABLESAMPLE

Table of contents
1 The Big
2 The Fast
4 Wrap up

The Fast
Image by Hein Waschefort -
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Hein waschefort

Page layout
A PostgreSQL’s data ﬁle is an array of ﬁxed length blocks called pages. The
default size is 8kb.
Figure : Index page

Page layout
Each page have an header used to enforce the durability, and the optional page’s
checksum. There are some pointers used to track the free space inside the page.

Tuple layout
Just after the header there is a list of pointers to the physical tuples stored in the
page’s end. Each tuple is and array of raw data, called datum. The nature of this
datum is unknown to the postgres process. The datum becomes the data type
when PostgreSQL loads the page in memory. This requires a system catalogue
look up.
Figure : Tuple structure
The tuple’s header is used in the MVCC.

The magic of the MVCC
Any operation in PostgreSQL happens through transactions.
By default when a single statement is successfully completed the database
commits automatically the transaction.
It’s possible to wrap multiple statements in a single transaction using the
keywords [BEGIN;]....... [COMMIT; ROLLBACK]
The minimal possible level the transaction isolation is READ COMMITTED.
PostgreSQL from 9.2 supports the snapshot export to other sessions.

There’s no such thing like an update
Where’s the catch?

There’s no such thing like an update
Where’s the catch?
PostgreSQL actually NEVER performs an update.
The UPDATE behaviour is to add a new row version and to keep the old one for
read consistency.

Dead tuples and VACUUM
The tuples left in place for read consistency are called dead.
A dead tuple is left in place for any transaction that should see it. This adds
overhead to any I/O operation.
VACUUM clears the dead tuples
VACUUM is designed to have the minimal impact on the database normal
activity
VACUUM removes only dead tuples no longer visible to the open transactions
VACUUM prevents the xid wraparound failure

Table of contents
1 The Big
2 The Fast
4 Wrap up

The (NOSQL on) Acid

JSON
JSON - JavaScript Object Notation
The version 9.2 adds JSON as native data type
The version 9.3 adds the support functions for JSON
JSON is stored as text
JSON is parsed and validated on the ﬂy
The 9.4 adds JSONB (binary) data type

JSON
JSON - Examples
From record to JSON
postgres=# SELECT row_to_json(ROW(1,’foo’));
row_to_json
---------------------
{"f1":1,"f2":"foo"}
(1 row)
Expanding JSON into key to value elements
postgres=# SELECT * from json_each(’{"a":"foo", "b":"bar"}’);
key | value
-----+-------
a | "foo"
b | "bar"
(2 rows)

HSTORE
HSTORE is a custom data type used to store key to value items
Is an extension
Data stored as text
A shared library does the magic transforming the datum in HSTORE
Is similar to JSON without nested elements

HSTORE
HSTORE - Examples
From record to HSTORE
postgres=# SELECT hstore(ROW(1,2));
hstore
----------------------
"f1"=>"1", "f2"=>"2"
(1 row)
HSTORE expansion to key to value elements
postgres=# SELECT * FROM each(’a=>1,b=>2’);
key | value
-----+-------
a | 1
b | 2
(2 rows)

JSON and HSTORE
There is a subtile difference between HSTORE and JSON. HSTORE is not a
native data type.
The JSON is a native data type and the conversion happens inside the postgres
process.
The HSTORE requires the access to the shared library.
Because the conversion from the raw datum happens for each tuple loaded in the
shared buffer can affect the performance’s overall.

JSONB
Because JSON is parsed and validated on the ﬂy and and this can be a bottleneck.
The new JSONB introduced with PostgreSQL 9.4 is parsed, validated and
transformed at insert/update’s time. The access is then faster than the plain
JSON but the storage cost can be higher.
The functions available for JSON are also available in the JSONB ﬂavour.

Some numbers
Let’s create three tables with text,json and jsonb type ﬁelds.
Each record contains the same json element generated on
http://beta.json-generator.com/4kwCt-fwg
[ {
"_id": "56891aba27402de7f551bc91",
"index": 0,
"guid": "b9345045-1222-4f71-9540-6ed7c8d2ccae",
"isActive": false,
............
3,
{
"id": 1,
"name": "Bridgett Shaw"
}
],
"greeting": "Hello, Johnston! You have 8 unread messages.",
"favoriteFruit": "apple"
}
]

Some numbers
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS t_json ;
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS t_jsonb ;
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS t_text ;
CREATE TABLE t_json as
SELECT
’<JSON ELEMENT >’:: json as js_value
FROM
generate_series (1 ,100000);
Query returned successfully : 100000 rows affected , 14504 ms execution time.
CREATE TABLE t_text as
SELECT
’<JSON ELEMENT >’:: text as t_value
FROM
CREATE TABLE t_jsonb as
SELECT
’<JSON ELEMENT >’:: jsonb as jsb_value
FROM

Table size
SELECT
pg_size_pretty ( pg_total_relation_size (oid)),
relname
FROM
pg_class
WHERE
relname LIKE ’t_%’
;
pg_size_pretty | relname
-- --------------+---------
270 MB | t_json
322 MB | t_jsonb
270 MB | t_text
(3 rows)

Sequential scans
TEXT
EXPLAIN (BUFFERS , ANALYZE) SELECT * FROM t_text;
Seq Scan on t_text (cost =0.00..1637.00 rows =100000 width =18) (actual time
=0.016..17.624 rows =100000 loops =1)
Buffers: shared hit =637
Planning time: 0.040 ms
Execution time: 28.967 ms
(4 rows)

Sequential scans
JSON
EXPLAIN (BUFFERS , ANALYZE) SELECT * FROM t_json;
Seq Scan on t_json (cost =0.00..1637.09 rows =100009 width =32) (actual time
=0.018..15.443 rows =100000 loops =1)
(4 rows)

Sequential scans
JSONB
EXPLAIN (BUFFERS , ANALYZE) SELECT * FROM t_jsonb;
Seq Scan on t_jsonb (cost =0.00..1637.00 rows =100000 width =18) (actual time
=0.015..18.943 rows =100000 loops =1)
(4 rows)

Sequential scan with json access
TEXT
EXPLAIN (BUFFERS , ANALYZE) SELECT t_value ::json ->’index ’ FROM t_text;
Seq Scan on t_text (cost =0.00..2387.00 rows =100000 width =18) (actual time
=0.159..7748.381 rows =100000 loops =1)
(4 rows)

JSON
EXPLAIN (BUFFERS , ANALYZE) SELECT js_value ->’index ’ FROM t_json;
Seq Scan on t_json (cost =0.00..1887.11 rows =100009 width =32) (actual time
=0.254..5787.267 rows =100000 loops =1)
(4 rows)

JSONB
EXPLAIN (BUFFERS , ANALYZE) SELECT jsb_value ->’index ’ FROM t_jsonb;
Seq Scan on t_jsonb (cost =0.00..1887.00 rows =100000 width =18) (actual time
=0.138..1678.222 rows =100000 loops =1)
(4 rows)

Table of contents
1 The Big
2 The Fast
4 Wrap up

Wrap up
Schema less data are useful. They are ﬂexible and powerful.
Never forget the update strategy in PostgreSQL
The lack of horizontal scalability in PostgreSQL can be a serious problem.
An interesting project for a distributed cluster is PostgreSQL XL -
http://www.postgres-xl.org/
CitusDB is a powerful DWH oriented DBMS with horizontal scale capabilities
- should become open source in the next release
Never forget PostgreSQL is a RDBMS
Get a DBA on board

Questions
Questions?

Contacts
Twitter: 4thdoctor scarf
Personal blog: http://www.pgdba.co.uk
PostgreSQL Book:
http://www.slideshare.net/FedericoCampoli/postgresql-dba-01
Brighton PostgreSQL Meetup:
http://www.meetup.com/Brighton-PostgreSQL-Meetup/

License and copyright
This presentation is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
The elephant photo is copyright by Caitlin -
https://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/lizard queen
The cheetah photo is copyright by Hein Waschefort -
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Hein waschefort
The elephant logos are copyright of the PostgreSQL Global Development
Group - http://www.postgresql.org/

PostgreSQL, The Big, The Fast
and The (NOSQL on ) Acid
Federico Campoli
09 Jan 2016

Pg big fast ugly acid

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