[pgpool-general: 4368] pgpool-II 3.4.0 and pgpoolAdmin 3.4.0 officially released

Yugo Nagata nagata at sraoss.co.jp
Fri Jan 29 18:56:57 JST 2016


Pgpool Global Development Group is pleased to announce the availability of
pgpool-II 3.5.0 and pgpoolAdmin 3.5.0.

You can download the source codes and RPMs from:
http://pgpool.net/mediawiki/index.php/Downloads

V3.5 new features are:

- Improved performance in extended query protocol
- Overcoming the thundering herd problem
- Watchdog feature enhancements to be more robust and adaptable
- PCP command enhancements
- Import PostgreSQL 9.5 parser
- etc. 

Please see the below for details:
http://pgpool.net/mediawiki/index.php?title=pgpool-II_3.5_features&redirect=no

Release notes are here:

=========================================================================
                        3.5.0 (ekieboshi) 2016/01/29

* Version 3.5.0

      This is the first version of pgpool-II 3.5 series.
      That is, a "major version up" from 3.4 series.

      __________________________________________________________________

* Incompatible changes

    - Remove parallel query mode codes (Yugo Nagata)

      There are very few users and the maintenance efforts are not worth it.
      Codes for system db are also removed, since this was used in only parallel
      query mode and old query cache on disk. 

    - Rename parameter name from ifconfig_path to if_cmd_path (Yugo Nagata)

      ifconfig_path isn't appropriate for the parameter name because
      ifconfig command is obsolete and now ip command is used as default.

    - Change the syntax of pcp commands arguments (Muhammad Usama)

    - Change the output and the argument semantics of pcp_watchdog_info command
      (Muhammad Usama)

      The command is enhanced to show watchdog information about all pgpool-II
      nodes in the cluster. According to this, the argument to specify node index
      is changed so that 0 means local pgpool-II node instead of the first remote
      node. 

      __________________________________________________________________

* New features 

    - Add new parameter "serialize_accept" (Tatsuo Ishii)

      This parameter defines whether to serialize accept() call for incoming
      client connections.  Default is off, which means no serializing (same
      behavior as pgpool-II 3.4 or before).  If this is off, the kernel
      wakes up all of pgpool-II child process to execute accept() and one of
      them actually accepts the incoming connection.  Problem here is,
      because so my child process wake up at a same time, heavy context
      switching occurred and the performance is affected.  This phenomena is
      a classic problem called "the thundering herd problem".  By enabling
      serialize_accept, only one of pgpool-II child process is woken up and
      executes accept() and the problem can be avoided.

    - Import parser of PostgreSQL 9.5 (Yugo Nagata)

      pgpool-II can understand new syntax introduced in PostgreSQL 9.5 now.
      Especially GROUPING SET, CUBE, ROLLUP and TABLESAMPLE can be be load
      balanced and can be used in query cache (except for TABLESAMPLE).

      Also INSERT...ON CONFLICT and UPDATE tab SET (col1, col2, ...) =
      (SELECT ...) ... can now be properly handled in query rewriting in
      native replication mode.

    - Allow to specify database for health check and streaming replication
      delay check. (Tatsuo Ishii)

      For this purpose new directive "health_check_database" and
      "sr_check_database" are added.
  
      __________________________________________________________________

* Enhancements

    - Performance improvement in extened query protocol (Tatsuo Ishii)

      Unnecessary "flush" messages which used to be sent in each step of
      extended protocol messages (parse, bind, describe and execute) and
      brought significant communication overhead are removed. For now it
      only affects to streaming replication mode, that is, the performance
      of other modes remains same.

    - watchdog feature enhancements (Muhammad Usama, Yugo Nagata)

      The goal of this enhancement is to address the shortcomings and problems
      in the pgpool watchdog and make the watchdog system more robust and
      adaptable. Patch created by Usama, and reviewed, tested, and debugged
      by Yugo.

        -- The watchdog should consider the quorum and only elect the master/leader
           node if the quorum exist in the watchdog cluster.
        -- All the participating pgpool-II nodes in the watchdog cluster should have
           similar pgpool-II configurations.
        -- Watchdog nodes should have configurable watchdog node priority, to give
           users more control on which node should become a leader node.
        -- More options for the node health-checking, especially watchdog should allow
           external/3rd party node health checking system to integrate with it.
        -- The watchdog should keep looking for problems like split-brain syndrome and
           should automatically recover from it.
        -- Allow user to provide scripts to be executed at time of escalation and
           de-escalation to master/leader nodes.

      Add these new parameters:

        -- wd_ipc_socket_dir:
           This parameter is used to specify the directory where the UNIX domain
           socket accepting pgpool-II watchdog IPC connections will be created.

        -- wd_priority:
           This new parameter can be used to elevate the current watchdog node
           priority in leader elections. The node with the higher wd_priority
           value will get selected as master/coordinator watchdog node when
           cluster will be electing its master node at cluster startup or in the
           event of old master watchdog node failure.

        -- wd_de_escalation_command:
           This parameter holds the command that watchdog will execute on the
           master pgpool-II watchdog node when that node resigns from the master
           node responsibilities.

        -- wd_monitoring_interfaces_list:
           This parameter holds a comma separated list of network device names to
           be monitored by the watchdog process for the network link state.

    - Overhauling pcp commands (Muhammad Usama)

        -- Improved handling of command argument:
           Long command line options can be used now. 
        -- PCP password is safe:
           Don't pass password via command line, which causes security risks.
        -- Mutiple concurrent execution of pcp commands:
           Allow to execute a pcp command while running pcp_recovery_node
           which takes sometime to finish.

    - SELECT count statics in "show pool_nodes" command results (Tatsuo Ishii)

      show pool_nodes results which briefly describes the status of each backend
      now shows how many SELECTs are issued to them. So you can quickly
      recognize the effect of load balancing for example;

        test=# show pool_nodes;
         node_id | hostname | port  | status | lb_weight |  role   | select_cnt 
        ---------+----------+-------+--------+-----------+---------+------------
         0       | /tmp     | 11002 | 2      | 0.500000  | primary | 338230
         1       | /tmp     | 11003 | 2      | 0.500000  | standby | 163939
        (2 rows)

    - Parser enhancements for query rewriting (Yugo Nagata)

      INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE with WITH clause, writable CTE, RETURNING clause
      can now be properly handled in query rewriting in native replication mode.

    - Allow to open pool_passwd file in read only mode by pgpool-II main
      process (Tatsuo Ishii)

    - Allow to run pgpool in debug mode in regression tests (Tatsuo Ishii)

    - doc:Add pgpool_adm documents (Tatsuo Ishii)

    - doc:Update Chinese documents (Bambo Huang)

      __________________________________________________________________

* Bug fixes (since 3.4.3)

    - doc: Fix misinformation regarding load balancing in docs (Tatsuo Ishii)

      In streaming replication mode, DECLARE, FETCH, CLOSE and SHOW are sent
      to primary node only. Pointed out in [pgpool-general-jp: 1378].

    - Issue fsync() when writing pgpool_status. (Tatsuo Ishii)

      This ensures that pgpool_status is saved to permanent storage and
      allow to survive after system crash.

    - Fix reset query stuck problem (Muhammad Usama)

      It is reported that reset query (DISCARD ALL etc.) occasionally does
      not finish and pgpool child remain waiting for reply from the backend
      thus client cannot connect to pgpool (for example bug report #107).
      The cause of problem is not identified yet but if client suddenly
      closes connection to pgpool in the middle of query processing, backend
      may not accept the reset queries because they are not ready for query.

      The fix is to keep track of the status of frontend socket state and not
      caching the PostgreSQL connection if the connection to frontend was not
      properly terminated.

    - test: Fix false alerm of regression tset 062 (Yugo Nagata)

    - test: Fix broken regression test for native replication (Yugo Nagata)

      Test for insert-lock didn't work.

    - test: Fix regress test to sleep after pgpool_reload (Yugo Nagata)

      Some regression tests modify configuration file and reloads. However,
      sometimes these were not applied to pgpool just after reloading.

    - Fix inconsistency of sequence values in replication mode (Yugo Nagata)

      When a schema name was provided, the table name was quoted wrongly as
      like "public.mytbl" instead of "public"."mytbl". So, pool_regclass
      and to_regclass couldn't find right talbe oid and insert lock was
      never executed. This caused inconsistency between DB nodes.

    - test: Fix complication error and segfault of timestamp rewrite test (Yugo Nagata)

    - doc: Fix untranslated sentence in Japanese document (Yugo Nagata)

    - Fix ancient bug of pool_push() and friends. (Tatsuo Ishii)

      It allocates buffer using realloc and uses the pointer
      returned. However it does the pointer calculation *before* realloc
      gets called. So the calculation uses the old pointer value, which
      causes various problems including segfault later. 

      Also there were other problems with it. The buffer pointer and buffer
      size variable is not initialized. The buffer is not freed by
      pool_close. Typo in debugging message (3.4 or later only). They are
      fixed as well.

    - doc: Fix wrong description in documents about log_standby_delay (Yugo Nagata)

    - Fix segfalut that occurs when function is used in FROM clause (Yugo Nagata)

      PRPARE statements in streaming-reaplication mode and INSERT/UPDATE
      with SELECT in native-replication mode were affected. For example:

      - prepare p as select * from generate_series(1,1);
      - insert into tbl select now(), * from generate_series(1,1);

    - doc: Add caution about JDBC driver version regarding app_name_redirect_preference_list
      (Tatsuo Ishii)

    - Fix hang problmen reported in bug #145. (Tatsuo Ishii)

      The problem occurs when all the condition below are met:

      1) pgpool-II 3.4 or later
      2) streaming replication mode
      3) primary node is also load balance node
      4) extended protocol is used
      5) client_idle_limit reached

    - Fix a in-memory query cache bug (Tatsuo Ishii)

      If extended query protocol is used and a bind/execute message arrives
      which uses a statement created by prior parse message, the temp_cache
      is not initialized by a parse messages. Thus messages are added to pre
      existing temp cache buffer which causes the trouble, that is, when the
      cached result returns, Data Row message and Command Complete message
      appeared twice.

      Per by bug #152.

    - test: Fix regression test 065. (Tatsuo Ishii)

      The path to JDBC driver was explicitly defined. This is wrong. This
      should be inherited from JDBC_DRIVER environment variable.

    - test: Fix possible hang-up of regression test 054.postgres_fdw (Yugo Nagata)

    - test: Add option to regress.sh and pgpool_setup for unix domain socket
      directory (Yugo Nagata)

    - doc: Add missing descriptions about default values to documents
      (Yugo Nagata)

    - test: Fix regression test 055 for rhel7 rpm (Yugo Nagata)

    - Fix reset query stuck problem (Muhammad Usama) 

      The issue is already fixed in older branches and this fix adopts the
      same solution used by 3.3 series, i.e. closing the backend connection
      when client idle limit is reached.

    - Fix bug with "SET TRANSACTION READ ONLY" (Tatsuo Ishii)

      Pgpool-II remembers that non read only queries (including SET) were
      executed in an explicit transaction and adds a "writing transaction"
      mark to the transaction. The mark affects the query routing behavior
      of pgpool-II while running in streaming replication mode. Pgpool-II
      starts sending queries to the primary after the mark is set. Because
      the effect of writing queries may appear on standbys after some delay
      in streaming replication mode, it is safer to route read queries to
      the primary after the mark is set.

      However there's oversight here. "SET TRANSACTION READ ONLY" does no
      data modification and should be treated as an exception.
      
      Per bug #157.

    - test: Fix to use timeout command to handle time out of regress test 062
      (Yugo Nagata)

    - Fix to show wrong error (Tatsuo Ishii)

      connect_with_timeout() does not show proper error info when
      getsockopt(SO_ERROR) reports an error. Pointed out in bug #159.

    - test: Add regress.sh missing \n in help messages (Yugo Nagata)

    - Fix the logic issue in get_backends_status() function (Muhammad Usama)

      get_backends_status () function counts the number of current valid and down
      backend nodes. The function assumed that the node was also invalid when its
      connection status was down. However, that is not always right.

    - Fix white/black_memqcache_table_list  not to require quotaion (Yugo Nagata)

      The tables and schemas name specified in *_memqcache_table_list
      were needed to be quoted by double quotation.

      Patch contributed by Dang Minh Huong.
      Per [pgpool-hackers: 1323]

    - Fix FATAL error with reloading (Tatsuo Ishii)

      While reloading pgpool.conf, the number of DB nodes is tentatively set
      to 0, then counted up until reaching to the actual number of backends
      by the pgpool main process. Unfortunately the variable was on the
      shared memory and it confused pgpool child process when they were using
      the variable and this caused FATAL error.

      Per bug #156 report by harukat.

    - test: Add some tests for white/black_memqcache_table_list to regression
      test 006.memqcache (Yugo Nagata)

    - Fix reset query stuck problem (Muhammad Usama, Tatsuo Ishii)

      When pool_read fails to read from frontend or pool_flush fails to
      write to the frontend, report FRONTEND_ERROR, rather than ERROR to
      disconnect and terminate pgpool child process, to prevent the query
      stuck problem.

    - test: Fix some regression tests that failed in debug mode (Yugo Nagata)

    - Fix performance degradation while using IPv6 (Muhammad Usama)

      Per bug #165.

-- 
Yugo Nagata <nagata at sraoss.co.jp>


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