Introduce CompactAttribute array in TupleDesc

The new compact_attrs array stores a few select fields from
FormData_pg_attribute in a more compact way, using only 16 bytes per
column instead of the 104 bytes that FormData_pg_attribute uses.  Using
CompactAttribute allows performance-critical operations such as tuple
deformation to be performed without looking at the FormData_pg_attribute
element in TupleDesc which means fewer cacheline accesses.  With this
change, NAMEDATALEN could be increased with a much smaller negative impact
on performance.

For some workloads, tuple deformation can be the most CPU intensive part
of processing the query.  Some testing with 16 columns on a table
where the first column is variable length showed around a 10% increase in
transactions per second for an OLAP type query performing aggregation on
the 16th column.  However, in certain cases, the increases were much
higher, up to ~25% on one AMD Zen4 machine.

This also makes pg_attribute.attcacheoff redundant.  A follow-on commit
will remove it, thus shrinking the FormData_pg_attribute struct by 4
bytes.

Author: David Rowley
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAApHDvrBztXP3yx=NKNmo3xwFAFhEdyPnvrDg3=M0RhDs+4vYw@mail.gmail.com
Reviewed-by: Andres Freund, Victor Yegorov

1 files changed, 60 insertions, 10 deletions

diff --git a/src/backend/access/common/tupdesc.c b/src/backend/access/common/tupdesc.c
index 47379fef220..b49584768e5 100644
--- a/src/backend/access/common/tupdesc.c
+++ b/src/backend/access/common/tupdesc.c
@@ -57,6 +57,33 @@ ResourceOwnerForgetTupleDesc(ResourceOwner owner, TupleDesc tupdesc)
 }
 
 /*
+ * populate_compact_attribute
+ *		Fills in the corresponding CompactAttribute element from the
+ *		Form_pg_attribute for the given attribute number.  This must be called
+ *		whenever a change is made to a Form_pg_attribute in the TupleDesc.
+ */
+void
+populate_compact_attribute(TupleDesc tupdesc, int attnum)
+{
+	Form_pg_attribute src = TupleDescAttr(tupdesc, attnum);
+	CompactAttribute *dst = &tupdesc->compact_attrs[attnum];
+
+	memset(dst, 0, sizeof(CompactAttribute));
+
+	dst->attcacheoff = -1;
+	dst->attlen = src->attlen;
+
+	dst->attbyval = src->attbyval;
+	dst->attispackable = (src->attstorage != TYPSTORAGE_PLAIN);
+	dst->atthasmissing = src->atthasmissing;
+	dst->attisdropped = src->attisdropped;
+	dst->attgenerated = (src->attgenerated != '\0');
+	dst->attnotnull = src->attnotnull;
+
+	dst->attalign = src->attalign;
+}
+
+/*
  * CreateTemplateTupleDesc
  *		This function allocates an empty tuple descriptor structure.
  *
@@ -74,18 +101,19 @@ CreateTemplateTupleDesc(int natts)
 	Assert(natts >= 0);
 
 	/*
-	 * Allocate enough memory for the tuple descriptor, including the
-	 * attribute rows.
+	 * Allocate enough memory for the tuple descriptor, the CompactAttribute
+	 * array and also an array of the full FormData_pg_attribute data.
 	 *
-	 * Note: the attribute array stride is sizeof(FormData_pg_attribute),
-	 * since we declare the array elements as FormData_pg_attribute for
-	 * notational convenience.  However, we only guarantee that the first
+	 * Note: the 'attrs' array stride is sizeof(FormData_pg_attribute), since
+	 * we declare the array elements as FormData_pg_attribute for notational
+	 * convenience.  However, we only guarantee that the first
 	 * ATTRIBUTE_FIXED_PART_SIZE bytes of each entry are valid; most code that
 	 * copies tupdesc entries around copies just that much.  In principle that
 	 * could be less due to trailing padding, although with the current
 	 * definition of pg_attribute there probably isn't any padding.
 	 */
-	desc = (TupleDesc) palloc(offsetof(struct TupleDescData, attrs) +
+	desc = (TupleDesc) palloc(offsetof(struct TupleDescData, compact_attrs) +
+							  natts * sizeof(CompactAttribute) +
 							  natts * sizeof(FormData_pg_attribute));
 
 	/*
@@ -96,6 +124,7 @@ CreateTemplateTupleDesc(int natts)
 	desc->tdtypeid = RECORDOID;
 	desc->tdtypmod = -1;
 	desc->tdrefcount = -1;		/* assume not reference-counted */
+	desc->attrs = TupleDescAttrAddress(desc);
 
 	return desc;
 }
@@ -117,8 +146,10 @@ CreateTupleDesc(int natts, Form_pg_attribute *attrs)
 	desc = CreateTemplateTupleDesc(natts);
 
 	for (i = 0; i < natts; ++i)
+	{
 		memcpy(TupleDescAttr(desc, i), attrs[i], ATTRIBUTE_FIXED_PART_SIZE);
-
+		populate_compact_attribute(desc, i);
+	}
 	return desc;
 }
 
@@ -155,6 +186,8 @@ CreateTupleDescCopy(TupleDesc tupdesc)
 		att->atthasmissing = false;
 		att->attidentity = '\0';
 		att->attgenerated = '\0';
+
+		populate_compact_attribute(desc, i);
 	}
 
 	/* We can copy the tuple type identification, too */
@@ -183,6 +216,9 @@ CreateTupleDescCopyConstr(TupleDesc tupdesc)
 		   TupleDescAttr(tupdesc, 0),
 		   desc->natts * sizeof(FormData_pg_attribute));
 
+	for (i = 0; i < desc->natts; i++)
+		populate_compact_attribute(desc, i);
+
 	/* Copy the TupleConstr data structure, if any */
 	if (constr)
 	{
@@ -207,7 +243,7 @@ CreateTupleDescCopyConstr(TupleDesc tupdesc)
 			{
 				if (constr->missing[i].am_present)
 				{
-					Form_pg_attribute attr = TupleDescAttr(tupdesc, i);
+					CompactAttribute *attr = TupleDescCompactAttr(tupdesc, i);
 
 					cpy->missing[i].am_value = datumCopy(constr->missing[i].am_value,
 														 attr->attbyval,
@@ -252,10 +288,16 @@ TupleDescCopy(TupleDesc dst, TupleDesc src)
 {
 	int			i;
 
-	/* Flat-copy the header and attribute array */
+	/* Flat-copy the header and attribute arrays */
 	memcpy(dst, src, TupleDescSize(src));
 
 	/*
+	 * Adjust 'attrs' to point to the dst FormData_pg_attribute array rather
+	 * than the src's.
+	 */
+	dst->attrs = TupleDescAttrAddress(dst);
+
+	/*
 	 * Since we're not copying constraints and defaults, clear fields
 	 * associated with them.
 	 */
@@ -268,6 +310,8 @@ TupleDescCopy(TupleDesc dst, TupleDesc src)
 		att->atthasmissing = false;
 		att->attidentity = '\0';
 		att->attgenerated = '\0';
+
+		populate_compact_attribute(dst, i);
 	}
 	dst->constr = NULL;
 
@@ -322,6 +366,8 @@ TupleDescCopyEntry(TupleDesc dst, AttrNumber dstAttno,
 	dstAtt->atthasmissing = false;
 	dstAtt->attidentity = '\0';
 	dstAtt->attgenerated = '\0';
+
+	populate_compact_attribute(dst, dstAttno - 1);
 }
 
 /*
@@ -521,7 +567,7 @@ equalTupleDescs(TupleDesc tupdesc1, TupleDesc tupdesc2)
 					return false;
 				if (missval1->am_present)
 				{
-					Form_pg_attribute missatt1 = TupleDescAttr(tupdesc1, i);
+					CompactAttribute *missatt1 = TupleDescCompactAttr(tupdesc1, i);
 
 					if (!datumIsEqual(missval1->am_value, missval2->am_value,
 									  missatt1->attbyval, missatt1->attlen))
@@ -714,6 +760,8 @@ TupleDescInitEntry(TupleDesc desc,
 	att->attcompression = InvalidCompressionMethod;
 	att->attcollation = typeForm->typcollation;
 
+	populate_compact_attribute(desc, attributeNumber - 1);
+
 	ReleaseSysCache(tuple);
 }
 
@@ -821,6 +869,8 @@ TupleDescInitBuiltinEntry(TupleDesc desc,
 		default:
 			elog(ERROR, "unsupported type %u", oidtypeid);
 	}
+
+	populate_compact_attribute(desc, attributeNumber - 1);
 }
 
 /*