Workarounds for DDL restrictions v5.6

You can work around some of the limitations of PGD DDL operation handling. Often splitting the operation into smaller changes can produce the desired result that either isn't allowed as a single statement or requires excessive locking.

Adding a CONSTRAINT

You can add CHECK and FOREIGN KEY constraints without requiring a DML lock. This involves a two-step process:

• ALTER TABLE ... ADD CONSTRAINT ... NOT VALID
• ALTER TABLE ... VALIDATE CONSTRAINT

Execute these steps in two different transactions. Both of these steps take DDL lock only on the table and hence can be run even when one or more nodes are down. But to validate a constraint, PGD must ensure that:

• All nodes in the cluster see the ADD CONSTRAINT command.
• The node validating the constraint applied replication changes from all other nodes prior to creating the NOT VALID constraint on those nodes.

So even though the new mechanism doesn't need all nodes to be up while validating the constraint, it still requires that all nodes applied the ALTER TABLE .. ADD CONSTRAINT ... NOT VALID command and made enough progress. PGD waits for a consistent state to be reached before validating the constraint.

The new facility requires the cluster to run with Raft protocol version 24 and later. If the Raft protocol isn't yet upgraded, the old mechanism is used, resulting in a DML lock request.

Adding a column

To add a column with a volatile default, run these commands in separate transactions:

    ALTER TABLE mytable ADD COLUMN newcolumn coltype; -- Note the lack of DEFAULT or NOT NULL

    ALTER TABLE mytable ALTER COLUMN newcolumn DEFAULT volatile-expression;

	BEGIN;
	SELECT bdr.global_lock_table('mytable');
    UPDATE mytable SET newcolumn = default-expression;
	COMMIT;

This approach splits schema changes and row changes into separate transactions that PGD can execute and results in consistent data across all nodes in a PGD group.

For best results, batch the update into chunks so that you don't update more than a few tens or hundreds of thousands of rows at once. You can do this using a PROCEDURE with embedded transactions.

The last batch of changes must run in a transaction that takes a global DML lock on the table. Otherwise you can miss rows that are inserted concurrently into the table on other nodes.

If required, you can run ALTER TABLE mytable ALTER COLUMN newcolumn NOT NULL; after the UPDATE has finished.

Changing a column's type

Changing a column's type can cause PostgreSQL to rewrite a table. In some cases, though, you can avoid this rewriting. For example:

CREATE TABLE foo (id BIGINT PRIMARY KEY, description VARCHAR(128));
ALTER TABLE foo ALTER COLUMN description TYPE VARCHAR(20);

You can rewrite this statement to avoid a table rewrite by making the restriction a table constraint rather than a datatype change. The constraint can then be validated in a subsequent command to avoid long locks, if you want.

CREATE TABLE foo (id BIGINT PRIMARY KEY, description VARCHAR(128));
ALTER TABLE foo
  ALTER COLUMN description TYPE varchar,
  ADD CONSTRAINT description_length_limit CHECK (length(description) <= 20) NOT VALID;
ALTER TABLE foo VALIDATE CONSTRAINT description_length_limit;

If the validation fails, then you can UPDATE just the failing rows. You can use this technique for TEXT and VARCHAR using length() or with NUMERIC datatype using scale().

In the general case for changing column type, first add a column of the desired type:

ALTER TABLE mytable ADD COLUMN newcolumn newtype;

Create a trigger defined as BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE ON mytable FOR EACH ROW ... Creating ths trigger assigns NEW.newcolumn to NEW.oldcolumn so that new writes to the table update the new column.

UPDATE the table in batches to copy the value of oldcolumn to newcolumn using a PROCEDURE with embedded transactions. Batching the work helps reduce replication lag if it's a big table. Updating by range of IDs or whatever method you prefer is fine. Alternatively, you can update the whole table in one pass for smaller tables.

CREATE INDEX ... any required indexes on the new column. It's safe to use CREATE INDEX ... CONCURRENTLY individually without DDL replication on each node to reduce lock durations.

ALTER the column to add a NOT NULL and CHECK constraints, if required.

1. BEGIN a transaction.
2. DROP the trigger you added.
3. ALTER TABLE to add any DEFAULT required on the column.
4. DROP the old column.
5. ALTER TABLE mytable RENAME COLUMN newcolumn TO oldcolumn.
6. COMMIT.

Changing other types

The ALTER TYPE statement is replicated, but affected tables aren't locked.

When you use this DDL, ensure that the statement has successfully executed on all nodes before using the new type. You can achieve this using the bdr.wait_slot_confirm_lsn() function.

This example ensures that the DDL is written to all nodes before using the new value in DML statements:

ALTER TYPE contact_method ADD VALUE 'email';
SELECT bdr.wait_slot_confirm_lsn(NULL, NULL);