Postgres table with thousands of partition - postgresql

I have a postgres table (in postgres12) which is supposed to have thousands of partitions (200k at least) in near future.
Here is how I am creating the parent table:
create table if not exists content (
key varchar(20) not NULL,
value json not null default '[]'::json
) PARTITION BY LIST(key)
And then adding any given child tables like:
create table if not exists content_123 PARTITION OF content for VALUES in ('123');
Also I am adding an index on top of the child table for quick access (since I will be accessing the child table directly):
create index if not exists content_123_idx on content_123 using btree(key)
Here is my question: I have never in the past managed this many partitions in a postgres table so I am just wondering is there any downside of doing what I am doing? Also, (as mentioned above) I will not be querying from the parent table directly, but will read directly from individual child tables.

With these table definitions, the index is completely useless.
With 200000 partitions, query planning will become intolerably slow, and each SQL statement will need very many locks and open files. This won't work well.
Lump several keys together into a single partition (then the index might make sense).

Related

How to remove a partition key in Postgres

I have the following table in PostgreSQL:
CREATE TABLE foo (
bar text NOT NULL
...
)
PARTITION BY LIST (bar);
How can the whole partition key be removed from the table? It is possible to remove a single partition table with DETACH PARTITION, but I can't find a way to drop the partitioning itself.
You cannot drop partitioning. If you want to use an unpartitioned table instead, you have to move a lot of data. That is unavoidable, because the data are actually stored in the partitions.
You'll have to do something along the lines of
CREATE TABLE new_foo (LIKE foo);
INSERT INTO new_foo SELECT * FROM foo;
DROP TABLE foo;
ALTER TABLE new_foo RENAME TO foo;
The details may vary: you will have to take care of constraints and indexes, you can parallelize by running several inserts concurrently (for example for different partitions), and so on.
In any event it will be a longer down time. The only way I know o avoid this is to set up logical replication for the whole database and use an unpartitioned table on the standby side. Once replication has caught up, you can switch over to the standby database.

Is there a way to reserve a range in a postgres sequence?

I'm writing a program that generates large numbers of rows to be inserted into a PostgreSQL database. Due to the presence of multiple indices, this process is getting slower over time. That's why I want to move to using COPY which seems to be significantly faster. The problem is that one of the tables has a foreign key into another, and I do not have the IDs for the foreign key column.
I was thinking that maybe if I could reserve a range in the sequence used for the primary key of the first table, I could do the ID assignment manually but I don't think Postgres natively supports such an operation. Is there a way to achieve this another way?
First off from your source data identify the business key for the parent and child tables. Create those tables and a unique constraint business key. This will not be the surrogate - auto generated - PK. Now create a staging table with all the columns necessary (except the FK). Since you will most likely be using across sessions this is a permanent table, but the intent is single time usage. With this insert into the parent table generating the pk from the sequence. Then insert into the child selecting the FK by referencing the business key from the parent.
insert into parent( <columns> )
select column_list
from stage
on conflict (business key ) do nothing;
insert into child ( <columns>, )
select s.<columns>, a.id
from stage s
join parent a on s.business key = a.business key
on conflict (a.parent_id, child_bk) do nothing;
Since the above is rather obscure in the abstract see a concrete example here. There is no need attempting to "reserve a range", just let the pk/fk develop naturally.

Postgres table partitioning with star schema

I have a schema with one table with the majority of data, customer, and three other tables with foreign key references to customer.entry_id which is a BIGSERIAL field. The three other tables are called location, devices and urls where we store various data related to a specific entry in the customer table.
I want to partition the customer table into monthly child tables, and have that part worked out; customer will stay as-is, each month will have a table customer_YYYY_MM that inherits from the master table with the right CHECK constraint and indexes will be created on each individual child table. Data will be moved to the correct child tables while the master table stays empty.
My question is about the other three tables, as I want to partition them as well. However, they have no date information (at all), only the reference to the primary key from the master table. How can I setup the constraints on these tables? Is it even meaningful or possible without date information?
My application logic knows where to insert all the data (it's fairly trivial), but I expect to be able to do simple SELECT queries without specifying which child tables to get it from. So this should work as you would expect from non-partitioned tables:
SELECT l.*
FROM customer c
JOIN location l USING entry_id
WHERE c.date_field > '2015-01-01'
I would partition them by the reference key. The foreign key is used in join conditions and is not usually subject to change so it fulfills the following important points:
Partition by the information that is used mostly in the WHERE clauses of the queries or other parts where partitioning can be used to filter out tables that don't need to be scanned. As one guide puts it:
The objective when defining partitions should be to allow as many queries as possible to fetch data from as few partitions as possible - ideally one.
Partition by information that is not going to be changed so that rows don't constantly need to be thrown from one subtable to another
This all depends of the size of the tables too of course. If the sizes stay small then there is no need to partition.
Read more about partitioning here.
Use views:
create view customer as
select * from customer_jan_15 union all
select * from customer_feb_15 union all
select * from customer_mar_15;
create view location as
select * from location_jan_15 union all
select * from location_feb_15 union all
select * from location_mar_15;

DB2 Partitioning

I know how partitioning in DB2 works but I am unaware about where this partition values exactly get stored. After writing a create partition query, for example:
CREATE TABLE orders(id INT, shipdate DATE, …)
PARTITION BY RANGE(shipdate)
(
STARTING '1/1/2006' ENDING '12/31/2006'
EVERY 3 MONTHS
)
after running the above query we know that partitions are created on order for every 3 month but when we run a select query the query engine refers this partitions. I am curious to know where this actually get stored, whether in the same table or DB2 has a different table where partition value for every table get stored.
Thanks,
table partitions in DB2 are stored in tablespaces.
For regular tables (if table partitioning is not used) table data is stored in a single tablespace (not considering LOBs).
For partitioned tables multiple tablespaces can used for its partitions.
This is achieved by the "" clause of the CREATE TABLE statement.
CREATE TABLE parttab
...
in TBSP1, TBSP2, TBSP3
In this example the first partition will be stored in TBSP1, the second in TBSP2, The third in TBSP3, the fourth in TBSP1 and so on.
Table partitions are named in DB2 - by default PART1 ..PARTn - and all these details can be looked up in the system catalog view SYSCAT.DATAPARTITIONS including the specified partition ranges.
See also http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSEPGG_10.5.0/com.ibm.db2.luw.sql.ref.doc/doc/r0021353.html?cp=SSEPGG_10.5.0%2F2-12-8-27&lang=en
The column used as partitioning key can be looked up in syscat.datapartitionexpression.
There is also a long syntax for creating partitioned tables where partition names can be explizitly specified as well as the tablespace where the partitions will get stored.
For applications partitioned tables look like a single normal table.
Partitions can be detached from a partitioned table. In this case a partition is "disconnected" from the partitioned table and converted to a table without moving the data (or vice versa).
best regards
Michael
After a bit of research I finally figure it out and want to share this information with others, I hope it may come useful to others.
How to see this key values ? => For LUW (Linux/Unix/Windows) you can see the keys in the Table Object Editor or the Object Viewer Script tab. For z/OS there is an Object Viewer tab called "Limit Keys". I've opened issue TDB-885 to create an Object Viewer tab for LUW tables.
A simple query to check this values:
SELECT * FROM SYSCAT.DATAPARTITIONS
WHERE TABSCHEMA = ? AND TABNAME = ?
ORDER BY SEQNO
reference: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSEPGG_9.5.0/com.ibm.db2.luw.sql.ref.doc/doc/r0021353.html?lang=en
DB2 will create separate Physical Locations for each partition. So each partition will have its own Table-space. When you SELECT on this partitioned Table your SQL may directly go to a single partition or it may span across many depending on how your SQL is. Also, this may allow your SQL to run in parallel i.e. many TS can be accessed concurrently to speed up the SELECT.

How do I INSERT and SELECT data with partitioned tables?

I set up a set of partitioned tables per the docs at http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/interactive/ddl-partitioning.html
CREATE TABLE t (year, a);
CREATE TABLE t_1980 ( CHECK (year = 1980) ) INHERITS (t);
CREATE TABLE t_1981 ( CHECK (year = 1981) ) INHERITS (t);
CREATE RULE t_ins_1980 AS ON INSERT TO t WHERE (year = 1980)
DO INSTEAD INSERT INTO t_1980 VALUES (NEW.year, NEW.a);
CREATE RULE t_ins_1981 AS ON INSERT TO t WHERE (year = 1981)
DO INSTEAD INSERT INTO t_1981 VALUES (NEW.year, NEW.a);
From my understanding, if I INSERT INTO t (year, a) VALUES (1980, 5), it will go to t_1980, and if I INSERT INTO t (year, a) VALUES (1981, 3), it will go to t_1981. But, my understanding seems to be incorrect. First, I can't understand the following from the docs
"There is currently no simple way to specify that rows must not be inserted into the master table. A CHECK (false) constraint on the master table would be inherited by all child tables, so that cannot be used for this purpose. One possibility is to set up an ON INSERT trigger on the master table that always raises an error. (Alternatively, such a trigger could be used to redirect the data into the proper child table, instead of using a set of rules as suggested above.)"
Does the above mean that in spite of setting up the CHECK constraints and the RULEs, I also have to create TRIGGERs on the master table so that the INSERTs go to the correct tables? If that were the case, what would be the point of the db supporting partitioning? I could just set up the separate tables myself? I inserted a bunch of values into the master table, and those rows are still in the master table, not in the inherited tables.
Second question. When retrieving the rows, do I select from the master table, or do I have to select from the individual tables as needed? How would the following work?
SELECT year, a FROM t WHERE year IN (1980, 1981);
Update: Seems like I have found the answer to my own question
"Be aware that the COPY command ignores rules. If you are using COPY to insert data, you must copy the data into the correct child table rather than into the parent. COPY does fire triggers, so you can use it normally if you create partitioned tables using the trigger approach."
I was indeed using COPY FROM to load data, so RULEs were being ignored. Will try with TRIGGERs.
Definitely try triggers.
If you think you want to implement a rule, don't (the only exception that comes to mind is updatable views). See this great article by depesz for more explanation there.
In reality, Postgres only supports partitioning on the reading side of things. You're going to have setup the method of insertition into partitions yourself - in most cases TRIGGERing. Depending on the needs and applicaitons, it can sometimes be faster to teach your application to insert directly into the partitions.
When selecting from partioned tables, you can indeed just SELECT ... WHERE... on the master table so long as your CHECK constraints are properly setup (they are in your example) and the constraint_exclusion parameter is set corectly.
For 8.4:
SET constraint_exclusion = partition;
For < 8.4:
SET constraint_exclusion = on;
All this being said, I actually really like the way Postgres does it and use it myself often.
Does the above mean that in spite of
setting up the CHECK constraints and
the RULEs, I also have to create
TRIGGERs on the master table so that
the INSERTs go to the correct tables?
Yes. Read point 5 (section 5.9.2)
If that were the case, what would be
the point of the db supporting
partitioning? I could just set up the
separate tables myself?
Basically: the INSERTS in the child tables must be done explicitly (either creating TRIGGERS, or by specifying the correct child table in the query). But the partitioning
is transparent for SELECTS, and (given the storage and indexing advantages of this schema) that's the point.
(Besides, because the partitioned tables are inherited,
the schema is inherited from the parent, hence consistency
is enforced).
Triggers are definitelly better than rules.
Today I've played with partitioning of materialized view table and run into problem with triggers solution.
Why ?
I'm using RETURNING and current solution returns NULL :)
But here's solution which works for me - correct me if I'm wrong.
1. I have 3 tables which are inserted with some data, there's an view (let we call it viewfoo) which contains
data which need to be materialized.
2. Insert into last table have trigger which inserts into materialized view table
via INSERT INTO matviewtable SELECT * FROM viewfoo WHERE recno=NEW.recno;
That works fine and I'm using RETURNING recno; (recno is SERIAL type - sequence).
Materialized view (table) need to be partitioned because it's huge, and
according to my tests it's at least x10 faster for SELECT in this case.
Problems with partitioning:
* Current trigger solution RETURN NULL - so I cannot use RETURNING recno.
(Current trigger solution = trigger explained at depesz page).
Solution:
I've changed trigger of my 3rd table TO NOT insert into materialized view table (that table is parent of partitioned tables), but created new trigger which inserts
partitioned table directly FROM 3rd table and that trigger RETURN NEW.
Materialized view table is automagically updated and RETURNING recno works fine.
I'll be glad if this helped to anybody.