[pgpool-general: 707] pgpool-II 3.2 Beta1 released

Nozomi Anzai anzai at sraoss.co.jp
Fri Jul 6 15:12:10 JST 2012


Pgpool Global Development Group is pleased to announce the
availability of pgpool-II 3.2 beta1.

Users are encouraged to take part in our beta test program.
Please help us in testing and making pgpool-II 3.2 better!

You can download it from here:
http://www.pgpool.net/download.php?f=pgpool-II-3.2beta1.tar.gz


We set milestones toward release pgpool-II 3.2:

2012/07/06(Fri): Beta 1 release
2012/07/13(Fri): Beta 2 release
2012/07/20(Fri): RC1 release
[pgpool-hackers: 80]


Major changes from 3.1.3 to beta1 are:

============================================================================
3.2.0 (namameboshi) 2012/07/xx

This is the first version of pgpool-II 3.2 series. That is, a "major
version up" from 3.1 series.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Incompatible changes
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

- The new query cache "On memory query cache" took the place of the old
  one.
  - Now the parameter "enable_query_cache" is deleted.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
New features
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

- Memory based query cache. (Tatsuo Ishii, Nozomi Anzai, Yugo Nagata)
  Original author is Masanori Yamazaki, improved by Development Group.

  Overview:

    [ New fast query cache ! ]

    On memory query cache is faster because cache storage is on memory.
    Moreover you don't need to restart pgpool-II when the cache is
    outdated because the underlying table gets updated.

    On memory cache saves pair of SELECT statements (with its Bind
    parameters if the SELECT is an extended query). If the same SELECTs
    comes in, it returns the value from cache. Since no SQL parsing nor
    access to PostgreSQL are involed, it's extremely fast.

   [ In some cases, it works slowly ]

    On the other hand, it might be slower than the normal path because it
    adds some overhead to store cache. Moreover when a table is updated,
    pgpool automatically deletes all the caches related to the table. So
    the prformace will be degraded by a system with a lot of updates.
    If the cache_hit_ratio is lower than 70%, you might want to disable onl
    memory cache.

  Choosing cache strage:
    You can choose a cache strage: shared memory or memcached (you can't
    use the both).
    Query cache with shared memory is fast and easy because you don't have
    to install and config memcached, but restricted the max size of cache
    by the one of shared memory. Query cache with memcached needs a
    overhead to access network, but you can set the size as you like. 

  Restrictions:

    [ Auto cache invalidation and Cache expire ]

    On memory query cache deletes the all cache of an updated table
    automatically with monitoring if the executed query is UPDATE, INSERT,
    ALTER TABLE and so on.
    But pgpool-II isn't able to recognize implicit updates due to trigers,
    foreign keys and DROP TABLE CASCADE.

    You can avoid this problem with memqcache_expire by which pgpool
    deletes old cache in a fixed time automatically, or with
    black_memqcache_table_list by which pgpool's memory cache flow ignores
    the tables.

    [ The case of mutual pgpool-II processes work ]

    If you want to use multiple instances of pgpool-II with online memory
    cache which uses shared memory, it could happen that one pgpool deletes
    cache, and the other one doesn't do it thus finds old cached result
    when a table gets updated. Memcached is the better cache strage in this
    case.

  New parameters:

    - Add parameters for on memoey query cache as follows:
      memory_cache_enabled, memqcache_method, memqcache_expire,
      memqcache_maxcache, memqcache_oiddir. (Tatsuo Ishii)

    - Add parameters about shared memory for on memory query cache as
      follows:
      memqcache_total_size, memqcache_max_num_cache,
      memqcache_cache_block_size. (Tatsuo Ishii)

    - Add parameters about memcached for on memory query cache as follows:
      memqcache_memcached_host, memqcache_memcached_port. (Tatsuo Ishii)

    - Add parameters about relation cache for on memory query cache as
      follows:
      relcache_expire, relcache_size. (Tatsuo Ishii)

    - Add a parameter "check_temp_table" to check if the SELECTed table is
      temp table. (Tatsuo Ishii)

    - Add the parameters of white_memqcache_table_list,
      black_memqcache_table_list that check if the SELECTed tables, temp
      tables and views are to be cached or not. (Nozomi Anzai)

    - Add a parameter "memqcache_auto_cache_invalidation" of the flag if
      query cache is triggered by corresponding DDL/DML/DCL (and
      memqcache_expire). (Yugo Nagata)

   New commands, etc.:

    - Add "SHOW pool cache" which shows hit ratio of query cache and the
      status of cache strage.

    - Add "--with-memcached" option to configure. (Nozomi Anzai)

    - Add "-C, --clear-oidmaps" option to "pgpool" command. (Nozomi Anzai)
      If pgpool with memcached starts / restarts with -C option, discard
      oid maps, if not, it can reuse old oid maps and query caches.

             - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

- Watchdog. (Atsushi Mitani, Yugo Nagata)
  Developped by Atsushi Mitani and tested by Yugo Nagata.

  Overview:

    "Watchdog" is a sub process of pgpool-II aiming for adding high
    availability feature to it. Features added by watchdog include:

    [ Life checking of pgpool service ]

    Watchdog monitors responses of pgpool service rather than process. It
    sends queries to PostgreSQL via pgpool which is being monitored by
    watchdog and watchdog checks the response.
    Also watchdog monitors connections to up stream servers (application
    servers etc.) from the pgpool.
    The connection between the up stream servers and the pgpool is
    monitored as service of pgpool.

    [ Mutually monitoring of watchdog processes ]

    Watchdog processes exchange information on the monitored servers to
    keep the information up to date, and to allow watchdog processes to
    mutually monitor each other.

    [ Changing active/standby state in case of certain faults detected ]

    When a fault is detected in the pgpool service, watchdog notifies the
    other watchdogs of it. Watchdogs decide the new active pgpool if
    previous active pgpool is broken by voting and change active/standby
    state.

    [ Automatic virtual IP address assigning synchronous  ]
    [ to server switching                                 ]

    When a standby pgpool server promotes to active, the new active
    server brings up virtual IP interface. Meanwhile, the previous active
    server brings down the virtual IP interface.
    This enables the active pgpool to work using the same IP address even
    when servers is switched over.

    [ Automatic registration of a server as standby in recovery ]

    When broken server recovers or new server is attached, the watchdog
    process notifies the other watchdog process along with information of
    the new server, and the watchdog process receives information on the
    active server and other servers. Then, the attached server is
    registered as standby.

  New parameters:

    - Add a parameter to enable watchdog: use_watchdog. (Atsushi Mitani)

    - Add the parameters about life checking of pgpool service as follows:
      wd_interval,other_pgpool_port wd_life_point, wd_lifecheck_query,
      other_pgpool_hostname, other_pgpool_port. (Atsushi Mitani)

    - Add the parameters about up to stream connection (e.g. to
      application servers) as follows: trusted_servers, ping_path.
     (Atsushi Mitani)

    - Add the parameters about mutual monitoring of watchdog processes as
      follows:
      wd_port, other_wd_port. (Atsushi Mitani)

    - Add the parameters about virtual IP as follows:
      ifconfig_path, if_up_cmd, if_down_cmd, arping_path, arping_cmd.
      (Atsushi Mitani)


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Enhancements
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

- Try to support poor platforms those do not have vsyslog such as HP-UX
  and AIX.(Tatsuo Ishii)

- Retry if health check faied rather than immediately do failover. For
  this purpose new directives "health_check_max_retries" and
  "health_check_retry_delay" were added. (Tatsuo Ishii)

  Patch contributed by Matt Solnit.

    Subject: [Pgpool-hackers] Health check retries (patch)
    From: Matt Solnit
    Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:28:44 -0500

- Log client IP and port number when pgpool failed to parse given query.
  (Tatsuo Ishii)

  This is usefull to identify which client gives wrong query without
  enabling log_connections, which produces too many log entries on busy web
  systems.

- Add "role" which represents "primary" or "standby" iin streaming
  replication mode for example to "SHOW pool_nodes" command.(Tatsuo Ishii)

- Adopt PostgreSQL 9.2. (Tatsuo Ishii)

- Add params to the result of "SHOW pool_status": backend_data_directory,
  ssl_ca_cert, ssl_ca_cert_dir, and sort by orders in pgpool.conf.
  (Nozomi Anzai)

- Commentout params about system db from pgpool.conf.sample-*.
  (Nozomi Anzai)

- Add new parameter to failover/failback/followmaster command.
  (Tatsuo Ishii)

    %r: new master port number
    %R: new master database cluster path

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bug fixes
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

- Allow to reload to recognize md5 password change. (Tatsuo Ishii)
  Before, the only way to recognize md5 password change was restarting
  pgpool-II. Patch contributed by Gurjeet Singh.

- Fix memory leak in Raw mode.(Tatsuo Ishii)

- Fix failover/failback in Raw mode. (Tatsuo Ishii)

  - Simply does not failover if target node is not master.
  - Fail to select master node if the node is in CON_UP.

- Fix pool_send_and_wait() to send or not to send COMMIT / ABORT depending
  on the transaction state on each node. (Tatsuo Ishii)

  It is possible that only primary is in an explicit transaction but
  standby is not in it if multi statement query has been sent. Per bug
  report [pgpool-general-jp: 1049].

- Fix load balance in Solaris. (Tatsuo Ishii)

  Problem is, random() in Using random() in Solaris results in strange
  load balancing calculation. Use srand()/rand() instead although they
  produce lesser quality random numbers.
  Problem reported at [pgpool-general: 396].

  [pgpool-general: 396] strange load balancing issue in Solaris
  http://www.sraoss.jp/pipermail/pgpool-general/2012-April/000397.html

- Fix segfault of pcp_systemdb_info not in parallel mode. (Nozomi Anzai)

- Fix "unnamed prepared statment does not exist" error. (Tatsuo Ishii)

  This is caused by pgpool's internal query, which breaks client's unnamed
  statements. To fix this, if extended query is used, named
  statement/portal for internal are used for internal query.

- Fix hangup when query conflict occurs in Hot-Standby mode. (Yugo Nagata)

  Query example to reproduce:

      (S1) BEGIN;
      (S1) SELECT * FROM t;
      (S2) DELETE FROM t;
      (S2) VACUUM t;

============================================================================
-- 
Nozomi Anzai
SRA OSS, Inc. Japan


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