Generate less WAL during GiST, GIN and SP-GiST index build.

Instead of WAL-logging every modification during the build separately,
first build the index without any WAL-logging, and make a separate pass
through the index at the end, to write all pages to the WAL. This
significantly reduces the amount of WAL generated, and is usually also
faster, despite the extra I/O needed for the extra scan through the index.
WAL generated this way is also faster to replay.

For GiST, the LSN-NSN interlock makes this a little tricky. All pages must
be marked with a valid (i.e. non-zero) LSN, so that the parent-child
LSN-NSN interlock works correctly. We now use magic value 1 for that during
index build. Change the fake LSN counter to begin from 1000, so that 1 is
safely smaller than any real or fake LSN. 2 would've been enough for our
purposes, but let's reserve a bigger range, in case we need more special
values in the future.

Author: Anastasia Lubennikova, Andrey V. Lepikhov
Reviewed-by: Heikki Linnakangas, Dmitry Dolgov

1 files changed, 5 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/src/include/access/gist_private.h b/src/include/access/gist_private.h
index 02dc285a78a..78e2e3fb312 100644
--- a/src/include/access/gist_private.h
+++ b/src/include/access/gist_private.h
@@ -244,6 +244,7 @@ typedef struct
 	Relation	r;
 	Relation	heapRel;
 	Size		freespace;		/* free space to be left */
+	bool		is_build;
 
 	GISTInsertStack *stack;
 } GISTInsertState;
@@ -393,7 +394,8 @@ extern void gistdoinsert(Relation r,
 			 IndexTuple itup,
 			 Size freespace,
 			 GISTSTATE *GISTstate,
-			 Relation heapRel);
+			 Relation heapRel,
+			 bool is_build);
 
 /* A List of these is returned from gistplacetopage() in *splitinfo */
 typedef struct
@@ -409,7 +411,8 @@ extern bool gistplacetopage(Relation rel, Size freespace, GISTSTATE *giststate,
 				Buffer leftchildbuf,
 				List **splitinfo,
 				bool markleftchild,
-				Relation heapRel);
+				Relation heapRel,
+				bool is_build);
 
 extern SplitedPageLayout *gistSplit(Relation r, Page page, IndexTuple *itup,
 		  int len, GISTSTATE *giststate);