Conflicts v3.7

BDR is an active/active or multi-master DBMS. If used asynchronously, writes to the same or related row(s) from multiple different nodes can result in data conflicts when using standard data types.

Conflicts aren't ERRORs - they are events that can be detected and resolved automatically as they occur by BDR, in most cases. Resolution depends upon the nature of the application and the meaning of the data, so it is important that BDR provides the application a range of choices as to how to resolve conflicts.

By default, conflicts are resolved at row level. That is, when changes from two nodes conflict, we pick either the local or remote tuple and discard the other one. For example, we may compare commit timestamps for the two conflicting changes, and keep the newer one. This ensures that all nodes converge to the same result, and establishes commit-order-like semantics on the whole cluster.

This chapter covers row-level conflicts with standard data types in detail.

Conflict handling is configurable, as described later in this chapter. Conflicts can be detected and handled differently for each table using conflict triggers, described in the Stream Triggers chapter.

Column-level conflict detection and resolution is available with BDR, described in the CLCD chapter.

If you wish to avoid conflicts, you can use these features in BDR.

• Conflict-free data types (CRDTs) - described in the CRDT chapter.
• Eager replication - described in the Eager Replication chapter.

By default, all conflicts are logged to bdr.conflict_history. If conflicts are possible then table owners should monitor for them, analyze to see how they can be avoided or plans made to handle them regularly as an application task. The LiveCompare tool is also available to scan regularly for divergence.

Some clustering systems use distributed lock mechanisms to prevent concurrent access to data. These can perform reasonably when servers are very close, but cannot support geographically distributed applications where very low latency is critical for acceptable performance.

Distributed locking is essentially a pessimistic approach, whereas BDR advocates an optimistic approach: avoid conflicts where possible, but allow some types of conflict to occur and resolve them when they arise.

How conflicts happen

Inter-node conflicts arise as a result of sequences of events that could not happen if all the involved transactions happened concurrently on the same node. Because the nodes only exchange changes after the transactions commit, each transaction is individually valid on the node it committed on, but would not be valid if applied on another node that did other conflicting work at the same time.

Since BDR replication essentially replays the transaction on the other nodes, the replay operation can fail if there is a conflict between a transaction being applied and a transaction that was committed on the receiving node.

The reason most conflicts can't happen when all transactions run on a single node is that PostgreSQL has inter-transaction communication mechanisms to prevent it - UNIQUE indexes, SEQUENCEs, row and relation locking, SERIALIZABLE dependency tracking, etc. All of these mechanisms are ways to communicate between ongoing transactions to prevent undesirable concurrency issues.

BDR does not have a distributed transaction manager or lock manager. That's part of why it performs well with latency and network partitions. As a result, transactions on different nodes execute entirely independently from each other, when using the default, lazy replication. Less independence between nodes can avoid conflicts altogether, which is why BDR also offers eager replication for when this is important.

Types of conflict

PRIMARY KEY or UNIQUE Conflicts

The most common conflicts are row conflicts, where two operations affect a row with the same key in ways they could not do on a single node. BDR can detect most of those and will apply the update_if_newer conflict resolver.

Row conflicts include:

• INSERT vs INSERT
• UPDATE vs UPDATE
• UPDATE vs DELETE
• INSERT vs UPDATE
• INSERT vs DELETE
• DELETE vs DELETE

The view bdr.node_conflict_resolvers provides information on how conflict resolution is currently configured for all known conflict types.

INSERT/INSERT Conflicts

The most common conflict, INSERT/INSERT, arises where INSERTs on two different nodes create a tuple with the same PRIMARY KEY values (or if no PRIMARY KEY exists, the same values for a single UNIQUE constraint ).

BDR handles this by retaining the most recently inserted tuple of the two, according to the originating host's timestamps, unless overridden by a user-defined conflict handler.

This conflict will generate the insert_exists conflict type, which is by default resolved by choosing the newer (based on commit time) row and keeping only that one (update_if_newer resolver). Other resolvers can be configured - see [Conflict Resolution] for details.

To resolve this conflict type, you can also use column-level conflict resolution and user-defined conflict triggers.

This type of conflict can be effectively eliminated by use of Global Sequences.

INSERTs that Violate Multiple UNIQUE Constraints

An INSERT/INSERT conflict can violate more than one UNIQUE constraint (of which one might be the PRIMARY KEY). If a new row violates more than one UNIQUE constraint and that results in a conflict against more than one other row, then the apply of the replication change will produce a multiple_unique_conflicts conflict.

In case of such a conflict, some rows must be removed in order for replication to continue. Depending on the resolver setting for multiple_unique_conflicts, the apply process will either exit with error, skip the incoming row, or delete some of the rows automatically. The automatic deletion will always try to preserve the row with the correct PRIMARY KEY and delete the others.

It's also possible to define a different behaviour using a conflict trigger.

UPDATE/UPDATE Conflicts

Where two concurrent UPDATEs on different nodes change the same tuple (but not its PRIMARY KEY), an UPDATE/UPDATE conflict can occur on replay.

These can generate different conflict kinds based on the configuration and situation. If the table is configured with [Row Version Conflict Detection], then the original (key) row is compared with the local row; if they are different, the update_differing conflict is generated. When using [Origin Conflict Detection], the origin of the row is checked (the origin is the node that the current local row came from); if that has changed, the update_origin_change conflict is generated. In all other cases, the UPDATE is normally applied without a conflict being generated.

Both of these conflicts are resolved same way as insert_exists, as described above.

UPDATE Conflicts on the PRIMARY KEY

BDR cannot currently perform conflict resolution where the PRIMARY KEY is changed by an UPDATE operation. It is permissible to update the primary key, but you must ensure that no conflict with existing values is possible.

Conflicts on the update of the primary key are [Divergent Conflicts] and require manual operator intervention.

Updating a PK is possible in PostgreSQL, but there are issues in both PostgreSQL and BDR.

Let's create a very simple example schema to explain:

CREATE TABLE pktest (pk integer primary key, val integer);
INSERT INTO pktest VALUES (1,1);

Updating the Primary Key column is possible, so this SQL succeeds:

UPDATE pktest SET pk=2 WHERE pk=1;

...but if we have multiple rows in the table, e.g.:

INSERT INTO pktest VALUES (3,3);

...then some UPDATEs would succeed:

UPDATE pktest SET pk=4 WHERE pk=3;

SELECT * FROM pktest;
 pk | val 
----+-----
  2 |   1
  4 |   3
(2 rows)

...but other UPDATEs would fail with constraint errors:

UPDATE pktest SET pk=4 WHERE pk=2;
ERROR:  duplicate key value violates unique constraint "pktest_pkey"
DETAIL:  Key (pk)=(4) already exists

So for PostgreSQL applications that UPDATE PKs, be very careful to avoid runtime errors, even without BDR.

With BDR, the situation becomes more complex if UPDATEs are allowed from multiple locations at same time.

Executing these two changes concurrently works:

node1: UPDATE pktest SET pk=pk+1 WHERE pk = 2;
node2: UPDATE pktest SET pk=pk+1 WHERE pk = 4;

SELECT * FROM pktest;
 pk | val 
----+-----
  3 |   1
  5 |   3
(2 rows)

...but executing these next two changes concurrently will cause a divergent error, since both changes are accepted. But when the changes are applied on the other node, this will result in update_missing conflicts.

node1: UPDATE pktest SET pk=1 WHERE pk = 3;
node2: UPDATE pktest SET pk=2 WHERE pk = 3;

...leaving the data different on each node:

node1:
SELECT * FROM pktest;
 pk | val 
----+-----
  1 |   1
  5 |   3
(2 rows)

node2:
SELECT * FROM pktest;
 pk | val 
----+-----
  2 |   1
  5 |   3
(2 rows)

This situation can be identified and resolved using LiveCompare.

Concurrent conflicts give problems. Executing these two changes concurrently is not easily resolvable:

node1: UPDATE pktest SET pk=6, val=8 WHERE pk = 5;
node2: UPDATE pktest SET pk=6, val=9 WHERE pk = 5;

Both changes are applied locally, causing a divergence between the nodes. But then apply on the target fails on both nodes with a duplicate key value violation ERROR, which causes the replication to halt and currently requires manual resolution.

This duplicate key violation error can now be avoided, and replication will not break, if you set the conflict_type update_pkey_exists to skip, update or update_if_newer. This may still lead to divergence depending on the nature of the update.

You can avoid divergence in cases like the one described above where the same old key is being updated by the same new key concurrently by setting update_pkey_exists to update_if_newer. However in certain situations, divergence will happen even with update_if_newer, namely when 2 different rows both get updated concurrently to the same new primary key.

As a result, we recommend strongly against allowing PK UPDATEs in your applications, especially with BDR. If there are parts of your application that change Primary Keys, then to avoid concurrent changes, make those changes using Eager replication.

UPDATEs that Violate Multiple UNIQUE Constraints

Like [INSERTs that Violate Multiple UNIQUE Constraints], where an incoming UPDATE violates more than one UNIQUE index (and/or the PRIMARY KEY), BDR will raise a multiple_unique_conflicts conflict.

BDR supports deferred unique constraints. If a transaction can commit on the source then it will apply cleanly on target, unless it sees conflicts. However, a deferred Primary Key cannot be used as a REPLICA IDENTITY, so the use cases are already limited by that and the warning above about using multiple unique constraints.

UPDATE/DELETE Conflicts

It is possible for one node to UPDATE a row that another node simultaneously DELETEs. In this case an UPDATE/DELETE conflict can occur on replay.

If the DELETEd row is still detectable (the deleted row wasn't removed by VACUUM), the update_recently_deleted conflict will be generated. By default the UPDATE will just be skipped, but the resolution for this can be configured; see [Conflict Resolution] for details.

The deleted row can be cleaned up from the database by the time the UPDATE is received in case the local node is lagging behind in replication. In this case BDR cannot differentiate between UPDATE/DELETE conflicts and [INSERT/UPDATE Conflicts] and will simply generate the update_missing conflict.

Another type of conflicting DELETE and UPDATE is a DELETE operation that comes after the row was UPDATEd locally. In this situation, the outcome depends upon the type of conflict detection used. When using the default, [Origin Conflict Detection], no conflict is detected at all, leading to the DELETE being applied and the row removed. If you enable [Row Version Conflict Detection], a delete_recently_updated conflict is generated. The default resolution for this conflict type is to to apply the DELETE and remove the row, but this can be configured or handled via a conflict trigger.

INSERT/UPDATE Conflicts

When using the default asynchronous mode of operation, a node may receive an UPDATE of a row before the original INSERT was received. This can only happen with 3 or more nodes being active (see [Conflicts with 3 or more nodes] below).

When this happens, the update_missing conflict is generated. The default conflict resolver is insert_or_skip, though insert_or_error or skip may be used instead. Resolvers that do insert-or-action will first try to INSERT a new row based on data from the UPDATE when possible (when the whole row was received). For the reconstruction of the row to be possible, the table either needs to have REPLICA IDENTITY FULL or the row must not contain any TOASTed data.

See [TOAST Support Details] for more info about TOASTed data.

INSERT/DELETE Conflicts

Similarly to the INSERT/UPDATE conflict, the node may also receive a DELETE operation on a row for which it didn't receive an INSERT yet. This is again only possible with 3 or more nodes set up (see [Conflicts with 3 or more nodes] below).

BDR cannot currently detect this conflict type: the INSERT operation will not generate any conflict type and the INSERT will be applied.

The DELETE operation will always generate a delete_missing conflict, which is by default resolved by skipping the operation.

DELETE/DELETE Conflicts

A DELETE/DELETE conflict arises where two different nodes concurrently delete the same tuple.

This will always generate a delete_missing conflict, which is by default resolved by skipping the operation.

This conflict is harmless since both DELETEs have the same effect, so one of them can be safely ignored.

Conflicts with 3 or more nodes

If one node INSERTs a row which is then replayed to a 2nd node and UPDATEd there, a 3rd node can receive the UPDATE from the 2nd node before it receives the INSERT from the 1st node. This is an INSERT/UPDATE conflict.

These conflicts are handled by discarding the UPDATE. This can lead to different data on different nodes, i.e. these are [Divergent Conflicts].

Note that this conflict type can only happen with 3 or more masters, of which at least 2 must be actively writing.

Also, the replication lag from node 1 to node 3 must be high enough to allow the following sequence of actions:

1. node 2 receives INSERT from node 1
2. node 2 performs UPDATE
3. node 3 receives UPDATE from node 2
4. node 3 receives INSERT from node 1

Using insert_or_error (or in some cases the insert_or_skip conflict resolver for the update_missing conflict type) is a viable mitigation strategy for these conflicts. Note however that enabling this option opens the door for INSERT/DELETE conflicts; see below.

1. node 1 performs UPDATE
2. node 2 performs DELETE
3. node 3 receives DELETE from node 2
4. node 3 receives UPDATE from node 1, turning it into an INSERT

If these are problems, it's recommended to tune freezing settings for a table or database so that they are correctly detected as update_recently_deleted.

Another alternative is to use [Eager Replication] to prevent these conflicts.

INSERT/DELETE conflicts can also occur with 3 or more nodes. Such a conflict is identical to INSERT/UPDATE, except with the UPDATE replaced by a DELETE. This can result in a delete_missing conflict.

BDR could choose to make each INSERT into a check-for-recently deleted, as occurs with an update_missing conflict. However, the cost of doing this penalizes the majority of users, so at this time we simply log delete_missing.

Later releases will automatically resolve INSERT/DELETE anomalies via re-checks using LiveCompare when delete_missing conflicts occur. These can be performed manually by applications by checking conflict logs or conflict log tables; see later.

These conflicts can occur in two main problem use cases:

• INSERT, followed rapidly by a DELETE - as can be used in queuing applications
• Any case where the PK identifier of a table is re-used

Neither of these cases is common and we recommend not replicating the affected tables if these problem use cases occur.

BDR has problems with the latter case because BDR relies upon the uniqueness of identifiers to make replication work correctly.

Applications that insert, delete and then later re-use the same unique identifiers can cause difficulties. This is known as the ABA Problem. BDR has no way of knowing whether the rows are the current row, the last row or much older rows. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABA_problem

Unique identifier reuse is also a business problem, since it is prevents unique identification over time, which prevents auditing, traceability and sensible data quality. Applications should not need to reuse unique identifiers.

Any identifier reuse that occurs within the time interval it takes for changes to pass across the system will cause difficulties. Although that time may be short in normal operation, down nodes may extend that interval to hours or days.

We recommend that applications do not reuse unique identifiers, but if they do, take steps to avoid reuse within a period of less than a year.

Any application that uses Sequences or UUIDs will not suffer from this problem.

Foreign Key Constraint Conflicts

Conflicts between a remote transaction being applied and existing local data can also occur for FOREIGN KEY constraints (FKs).

BDR applies changes with session_replication_role = 'replica', so foreign keys are not re-checked when applying changes. In an active/active environment this can result in FK violations if deletes occur to the referenced table at the same time as inserts into the referencing table. This is similar to an INSERT/DELETE conflict.

First we will explain the problem, and then provide solutions.

In single-master PostgreSQL, any INSERT/UPDATE that refers to a value in the referenced table will have to wait for DELETEs to finish before they can gain a row-level lock. If a DELETE removes a referenced value, then the INSERT/UPDATE will fail the FK check.

In multi-master BDR there are no inter-node row-level locks. So an INSERT on the referencing table does not wait behind a DELETE on the referenced table, so both actions can occur concurrently. Thus an INSERT/UPDATE on one node on the referencing table can utilize a value at the same time as a DELETE on the referenced table on another node. This then results in a value in the referencing table that is no longer present in the referenced table.

In practice, this only occurs if DELETEs occur on referenced tables in separate transactions from DELETEs on referencing tables. This is not a common operation.

In a parent-child relationship, e.g. Orders -> OrderItems, it isn't typical to do this; it is more likely to mark an OrderItem as cancelled than to remove it completely. For reference/lookup data, it would be strange to completely remove entries at the same time as using those same values for new fact data.

While there is a possibility of dangling FKs, the risk of this in general is very low and so BDR does not impose a generic solution to cover this case. Once users understand the situation in which this occurs, two solutions are possible:

The first solution is to restrict the use of FKs to closely related entities that are generally modified from only one node at a time, are infrequently modified, or where the modification's concurrency is application-mediated. This simply avoids any FK violations at the application level.

The second solution is to add triggers to protect against this case using the BDR-provided functions bdr.ri_fkey_trigger() and bdr.ri_fkey_on_del_trigger(). When called as BEFORE triggers, these functions will use FOREIGN KEY information to avoid FK anomalies by setting referencing columns to NULL, much as if we had a SET NULL constraint. Note that this re-checks ALL FKs in one trigger, so you only need to add one trigger per table to prevent FK violation.

As an example, we have two tables: Fact and RefData. Fact has an FK that references RefData. Fact is the referencing table and RefData is the referenced table. One trigger needs to be added to each table.

Add a trigger that will set columns to NULL in Fact if the referenced row in RefData has already been deleted.

CREATE TRIGGER bdr_replica_fk_iu_trg
    BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE ON fact
    FOR EACH ROW
    EXECUTE PROCEDURE bdr.ri_fkey_trigger();

ALTER TABLE fact
    ENABLE REPLICA TRIGGER bdr_replica_fk_iu_trg;

Add a trigger that will set columns to NULL in Fact at the time a DELETE occurs on the RefData table.

CREATE TRIGGER bdr_replica_fk_d_trg
    BEFORE DELETE ON refdata
    FOR EACH ROW
    EXECUTE PROCEDURE bdr.ri_fkey_on_del_trigger();

ALTER TABLE refdata
    ENABLE REPLICA TRIGGER bdr_replica_fk_d_trg;

Adding both triggers will avoid dangling foreign keys.

TRUNCATE Conflicts

TRUNCATE behaves similarly to a DELETE of all rows, but performs this action by physical removal of the table data, rather than row-by-row deletion. As a result, row-level conflict handling is not available, so TRUNCATE commands do not generate conflicts with other DML actions, even when there is a clear conflict.

As a result, the ordering of replay could cause divergent changes if another DML is executed concurrently on other nodes to the TRUNCATE.

Users may wish to take one of the following actions:

• Ensure TRUNCATE is not executed alongside other concurrent DML and rely on LiveCompare to highlight any such inconsistency.

• Replace TRUNCATE with a DELETE statement with no WHERE clause, noting that this is likely to have very poor performance on larger tables.

• Set bdr.truncate_locking = 'on' to set the TRUNCATE command’s locking behavior. Determines whether TRUNCATE obeys the bdr.ddl_locking setting. This is not the default behaviour for TRUNCATE since it requires all nodes to be up, so may not be possible or desirable in all cases.

Exclusion Constraint Conflicts

BDR does not support exclusion constraints, and prevents their creation.

If an existing stand-alone database is converted to a BDR database then all exclusion constraints should be manually dropped.

In a distributed asynchronous system it is not possible to ensure that no set of rows that violate the constraint exists, because all transactions on different nodes are fully isolated. Exclusion constraints would lead to replay deadlocks where replay could not progress from any node to any other node because of exclusion constraint violations.

If you force BDR to create an exclusion constraint, or you do not drop existing ones when converting a standalone database to BDR, you should expect replication to break. To get it to progress again, remove or alter the local tuple(s) that an incoming remote tuple conflicts with, so that the remote transaction can be applied.

Data Conflicts for Roles and Tablespace differences

Conflicts can also arise where nodes have global (PostgreSQL-system-wide) data, like roles, that differ. This can result in operations - mainly DDL - that can be run successfully and committed on one node, but then fail to apply to other nodes.

For example, node1 might have a user named fred, but that user was not created on node2. If fred on node1 creates a table, it will be replicated with its owner set to fred. When the DDL command is applied to node2, the DDL will fail because there is no user named fred. This failure will emit an ERROR in the PostgreSQL logs.

Administrator intervention is required to resolve this conflict by creating the user fred in the database where BDR is running. You may wish to set bdr.role_replication = on to resolve this in future.

Lock Conflicts and Deadlock Aborts

Because BDR writer processes operate much like normal user sessions, they are subject to the usual rules around row and table locking. This can sometimes lead to BDR writer processes waiting on locks held by user transactions, or even by each other.

Relevant locking includes:

• explicit table-level locking (LOCK TABLE ...) by user sessions
• explicit row-level locking (SELECT ... FOR UPDATE/FOR SHARE) by user sessions
• implicit locking because of row UPDATEs, INSERTs or DELETEs, either from local activity or from replication from other nodes

It is even possible for a BDR writer process to deadlock with a user transaction, where the user transaction is waiting on a lock held by the writer process, and vice versa. Two writer processes may also deadlock with each other. PostgreSQL's deadlock detector will step in and terminate one of the problem transactions. If the BDR writer process is terminated, it will simply retry, and generally succeed.

All these issues are transient and generally require no administrator action. If a writer process is stuck for a long time behind a lock on an idle user session, the administrator may choose to terminate the user session to get replication flowing again, but this is no different to a user holding a long lock that impacts another user session.

Use of the log_lock_waits facility in PostgreSQL can help identify locking related replay stalls.

Divergent Conflicts

Divergent conflicts arise when data that should be the same on different nodes differs unexpectedly. Divergent conflicts should not occur, but not all such conflicts can be reliably prevented at the time of writing.

Changing the PRIMARY KEY of a row can lead to a divergent conflict if another node changes the key of the same row before all nodes have replayed the change. Avoid changing primary keys, or change them only on one designated node.

Divergent conflicts involving row data generally require administrator action to manually adjust the data on one of the nodes to be consistent with the other one. Such conflicts should not arise so long as BDR is used as documented, and settings or functions marked as unsafe are avoided.

The administrator must manually resolve such conflicts. Use of the advanced options such as bdr.ddl_replication and bdr.ddl_locking may be required depending on the nature of the conflict. However, careless use of these options can make things much worse and it is not possible to give general instructions for resolving all possible kinds of conflict.

TOAST Support Details

PostgreSQL uses out of line storage for larger columns called TOAST.

The TOAST values handling in logical decoding (which BDR is built on top of) and logical replication is different from in-line data stored as part of the main row in the table.

The TOAST value will be logged into the transaction log (WAL) only if the value has changed. This can cause problems, especially when handling UPDATE conflicts because an UPDATE statement that did not change a value of a toasted column will produce a row without that column. As mentioned in [INSERT/UPDATE Conflicts], BDR will produce an error if an update_missing conflict is resolved using insert_or_error and there are missing TOAST columns.

However, there are more subtle issues than the above one in case of concurrent workloads with asynchronous replication (eager transactions are not affected). Imagine for example the following workload on a EDB Postgres Distributed cluster with 3 nodes called A, B and C:

1. on node A: txn A1 does an UPDATE SET col1 = 'toast data...' and commits first
2. on node B: txn B1 does UPDATE SET other_column = 'anything else'; and commits after A1
3. on node C: the connection to node A lags behind
4. on node C: txn B1 is applied first, it misses the TOASTed column in col1, but gets applied without conflict
5. on node C: txn A1 will conflict (on update_origin_change) and get skipped
6. node C will miss the toasted data from A1 forever

The above is not usually a problem when using BDR (it would be when using either built-in logical replication or plain pglogical for multi-master) because BDR adds its own logging of TOAST columns when it detects a local UPDATE to a row which recently replicated a TOAST column modification, and the local UPDATE is not modifying the TOAST. Thus BDR will prevent any inconsistency for TOASTed data across different nodes, at the price of increased WAL logging when updates occur on multiple nodes (i.e. when origin changes for a tuple). Additional WAL overhead will be zero if all updates are made from a single node, as is normally the case with BDR AlwaysOn architecture.

For the insert_or_error conflict resolution, the use of REPLICA IDENTITY FULL is however still required.

None of these problems associated with TOASTed columns affect tables with REPLICA IDENTITY FULL as this setting will always log a TOASTed value as part of the key since the whole row is considered to be part of the key. Both BDR and pglogical are smart enough to reconstruct the new row, filling the missing data from the key row. Be aware that as a result, the use of REPLICA IDENTITY FULL can increase WAL size significantly.

Avoiding or Tolerating Conflicts

In most cases the application can be designed to avoid conflicts, or to tolerate them.

Conflicts can only happen if there are things happening at the same time on multiple nodes, so the simplest way to avoid conflicts is to only ever write to one node, or to only ever write to a specific row in a specific way from one specific node at a time.

This happens naturally in many applications. For example, many consumer applications only allow data to be changed by the owning user, e.g. changing the default billing address on your account, so data changes seldom experience update conflicts.

It might happen that you make a change just before a node goes down, so the change appears to have been lost. You might then make the same change again, leading to two updates via different nodes. When the down node comes back up, it will try to send the older change to other nodes, but it will be rejected because the last update of the data is kept.

For INSERT/INSERT conflicts, use of Global Sequences can completely prevent this type of conflict.

For applications that assign relationships between objects, e.g. a room booking application, applying update_if_newer may not give an acceptable business outcome, i.e. it isn't useful to confirm to two people separately that they have booked the same room. The simplest resolution is to use Eager replication to ensure that only one booking succeeds. More complex ways might be possible depending upon the application, e.g. assign 100 seats to each node and allow those to be booked by a writer on that node, but if none are available locally, use a distributed locking scheme or Eager replication once most seats have been reserved.

Another technique for ensuring certain types of update only occur from one specific node would be to route different types of transaction through different nodes. For example:

• receiving parcels on one node, but delivering parcels via another node.
• a service application where orders are input on one node, work is prepared on a second node and then served back to customers on another.

The best course of action is frequently to allow conflicts to occur and design the application to work with BDR's conflict resolution mechanisms to cope with the conflict.

Conflict Detection

BDR provides these mechanisms for conflict detection:

• [Origin Conflict Detection] (default)
• [Row Version Conflict Detection]
• Column-Level Conflict Detection

Origin Conflict Detection

(Previously known as Timestamp Conflict Detection, but this was confusing.)

Origin conflict detection uses and relies on commit timestamps as recorded on the host where the transaction originates from. This requires clocks to be in sync to work correctly, or to be within a tolerance of the fastest message between two nodes. If this is not the case, conflict resolution will tend to favour the node that is further ahead. Clock skew between nodes can be managed using the parameters bdr.maximum_clock_skew and bdr.maximum_clock_skew_action.

Row origins are only available if track_commit_timestamps = on.

Conflicts are initially detected based upon whether the replication origin has changed or not, so conflict triggers will be called in situations that may turn out not to be actual conflicts. Hence, this mechanism is not precise since it can generate false positive conflicts.

Origin info is available only up to the point where a row is frozen. Updates arriving for a row after it has been frozen will not raise a conflict, so will be applied in all cases. This is the normal case when we add a new node by bdr_init_physical, so raising conflicts would cause many false positive cases in that case.

When a node that has been offline for some time reconnects and begins sending data changes, this could potentially cause divergent errors if the newly arrived updates are actually older than the frozen rows that they update. Inserts and Deletes are not affected by this situation.

Users are advised to not leave down nodes for extended outages, as discussed in Node Restart and Down Node Recovery.

On EDB Postgres Extended, BDR will automatically hold back the freezing of rows while a node is down to handle this situation gracefully without the need for changing parameter settings.

On other variants of Postgres, users may need to manage this situation with some care:

Freezing normally occurs when a row being vacuumed is older than vacuum_freeze_min_age xids from the current xid, which means that you need to configure suitably high values for these parameters:

• vacuum_freeze_min_age
• vacuum_freeze_table_age
• autovacuum_freeze_max_age

Values should be chosen based upon the transaction rate, giving a grace period of downtime before any conflict data is removed from the database server. For example, a node performing 1000 TPS could be down for just over 5.5 days before conflict data is removed, when vacuum_freeze_min_age is set to 500 million. The CommitTS datastructure will take on-disk space of 5 GB with that setting, so lower transaction rate systems may benefit from lower settings.

Initially recommended settings would be:

# 1 billion = 10GB
autovacuum_freeze_max_age = 1000000000

vacuum_freeze_min_age = 500000000

# 90% of autovacuum_freeze_max_age
vacuum_freeze_table_age = 900000000

Note that:

• autovacuum_freeze_max_age can only be set at server start.
• vacuum_freeze_min_age is user-settable, so using a low value will freeze rows early and could result in conflicts being ignored. autovacuum_freeze_min_age and toast.autovacuum_freeze_min_age can also be set for individual tables.
• running the CLUSTER or VACUUM FREEZE commands will also freeze rows early and could result in conflicts being ignored.

Row Version Conflict Detection

Alternatively, BDR provides the option to use row versioning and make conflict detection independent of the nodes' system clock.

Row version conflict detection requires 3 things to be enabled. If any of these steps are not performed correctly then [Origin Conflict Detection] will be used.

1. check_full_tuple must be enabled for the BDR node group.

2. REPLICA IDENTITY FULL must be enabled on all tables that are to use row version conflict detection.

3. Row Version Tracking must be enabled on the table by using bdr.alter_table_conflict_detection. This function will add a new column (with a user defined name) and an UPDATE trigger which manages the new column value. The column will be created as INTEGER type.

Although the counter is incremented only on UPDATE, this technique allows conflict detection for both UPDATE and DELETE.

This approach resembles Lamport timestamps and fully prevents the ABA problem for conflict detection.

To determine the current conflict resolution strategy used for a specific table, refer to the column conflict_detection of the view bdr.tables.

bdr.alter_table_conflict_detection

Allows the table owner to change how conflict detection works for a given table.

Synopsis

bdr.alter_table_conflict_detection(relation regclass,
                                   method text,
                                   column_name name DEFAULT NULL)

Parameters

• relation - name of the relation for which to set the new conflict detection method.
• method - which conflict detection method to use.
• column_name - which column to use for storing of the column detection data; this can be skipped, in which case column name will be automatically chosen based on the conflict detection method. The row_origin method does not require extra column for metadata storage.

The recognized methods for conflict detection are:

• row_origin - origin of the previous change made on the tuple (see [Origin Conflict Detection] above). This is the only method supported which does not require an extra column in the table.
• row_version - row version column (see [Row Version Conflict Detection] above).
• column_commit_timestamp - per-column commit timestamps (described in the CLCD chapter).
• column_modify_timestamp - per-column modification timestamp (described in the CLCD chapter).

Notes

For more information about the difference between column_commit_timestamp and column_modify_timestamp conflict detection methods, see Current vs Commit Timestamp section in the CLCD chapter.

This function uses the same replication mechanism as DDL statements. This means the replication is affected by the ddl filters configuration.

The function will take a DML global lock on the relation for which column-level conflict resolution is being enabled.

This function is transactional - the effects can be rolled back with the ROLLBACK of the transaction, and the changes are visible to the current transaction.

The bdr.alter_table_conflict_detection function can be only executed by the owner of the relation, unless bdr.backwards_compatibility is set to 30618 or below.

List of Conflict Types

BDR recognizes the following conflict types, which can be used as the conflict_type parameter:

• insert_exists - an incoming insert conflicts with an existing row via a primary key or an unique key/index.
• update_differing - an incoming update's key row differs from a local row. This can only happen when using [Row Version Conflict Detection].
• update_origin_change - an incoming update is modifying a row that was last changed by a different node.
• update_missing - an incoming update is trying to modify a row that does not exist.
• update_recently_deleted - an incoming update is trying to modify a row that was recently deleted.
• update_pkey_exists - an incoming update has modified the PRIMARY KEY to a value that already exists on the node that is applying the change.
• multiple_unique_conflicts - the incoming row conflicts with multiple UNIQUE constraints/indexes in the target table.
• delete_recently_updated - an incoming delete with an older commit timestamp than the most recent update of the row on the current node, or when using [Row Version Conflict Detection].
• delete_missing - an incoming delete is trying to remove a row that does not exist.
• target_column_missing - the target table is missing one or more columns present in the incoming row.
• source_column_missing - the incoming row is missing one or more columns that are present in the target table.
• target_table_missing - the target table is missing.
• apply_error_ddl - an error was thrown by PostgreSQL when applying a replicated DDL command.

Conflict Resolution

Most conflicts can be resolved automatically. BDR defaults to a last-update-wins mechanism - or more accurately, the update_if_newer conflict resolver. This mechanism will retain the most recently inserted or changed row of the two conflicting ones based on the same commit timestamps used for conflict detection. The behaviour in certain corner case scenarios depends on the settings used for [bdr.create_node_group] and alternatively for [bdr.alter_node_group].

BDR lets the user override the default behaviour of conflict resolution via the following function:

bdr.alter_node_set_conflict_resolver

This function sets the behaviour of conflict resolution on a given node.

Synopsis

bdr.alter_node_set_conflict_resolver(node_name text,
                                     conflict_type text,
                                     conflict_resolver text)

Parameters

• node_name - name of the node that is being changed
• conflict_type - conflict type for which the setting should be applied (see [List of Conflict Types])
• conflict_resolver - which resolver to use for the given conflict type (see [List of Conflict Resolvers])

Notes

Currently only the local node can be changed. The function call is not replicated. If you want to change settings on multiple nodes, the function must be run on each of them.

Note that the configuration change made by this function will override any default behaviour of conflict resolutions specified via [bdr.create_node_group] or bdr.alter_node_group.

This function is transactional - the changes made can be rolled back and are visible to the current transaction.

List of Conflict Resolvers

There are several conflict resolvers available in BDR, with differing coverages of the conflict types they can handle:

• error - throws error and stops replication. Can be used for any conflict type.
• skip - skips processing of the remote change and continues replication with the next change. Can be used for insert_exists, update_differing, update_origin_change, update_missing, update_recently_deleted, update_pkey_exists, delete_recently_updated, delete_missing, target_table_missing, target_column_missing and source_column_missing conflict types.
• skip_if_recently_dropped - skip the remote change if it's for a table that does not exist on downstream because it has been recently (currently within 1 day) dropped on the downstream; throw an error otherwise. Can be used for the target_table_missing conflict type. skip_if_recently_dropped conflict resolver may pose challenges if a table with the same name is recreated shortly after it's dropped. In that case, one of the nodes may see the DMLs on the recreated table before it sees the DDL to recreate the table. It will then incorrectly skip the remote data, assuming that the table is recently dropped and cause data loss. It is hence recommended to not reuse the object namesq immediately after they are dropped along with this conflict resolver.
• skip_transaction - skips the whole transaction that has generated the conflict. Can be used for apply_error_ddl conflict.
• update_if_newer - update if the remote row was committed later (as determined by the wall clock of the originating server) than the conflicting local row. If the timestamps are same, the node id is used as a tie-breaker to ensure that same row is picked on all nodes (higher nodeid wins). Can be used for insert_exists, update_differing, update_origin_change and update_pkey_exists conflict types.
• update - always perform the replicated action. Can be used for insert_exists (will turn the INSERT into UPDATE), update_differing, update_origin_change, update_pkey_exists, and delete_recently_updated (performs the delete).
• insert_or_skip - try to build a new row from available information sent by the origin and INSERT it; if there is not enough information available to build a full row, skip the change. Can be used for update_missing and update_recently_deleted conflict types.
• insert_or_error - try to build new row from available information sent by origin and INSERT it; if there is not enough information available to build full row, throw error and stop the replication. Can be used for update_missing and update_recently_deleted conflict types.
• ignore - ignore any missing target column and continue processing. Can be used for the target_column_missing conflict type.
• ignore_if_null - ignore a missing target column if the extra column in the remote row contains a NULL value, otherwise throw error and stop replication. Can be used for the target_column_missing conflict type.
• use_default_value - fill the missing column value with the default (including NULL if that's the column default) and continue processing. Any error while processing the default or violation of constraints (i.e. NULL default on NOT NULL column) will stop replication. Can be used for the source_column_missing conflict type.

The insert_exists, update_differing, update_origin_change, update_missing, multiple_unique_conflicts, update_recently_deleted, update_pkey_exists, delete_recently_updated and delete_missing conflict types can also be resolved by user-defined logic using Conflict Triggers.

Here is a matrix that will help you individuate what conflict types the conflict resolvers can handle.

Default Conflict Resolvers

List of Conflict Resolutions

The conflict resolution represents the kind of resolution chosen by the conflict resolver, and corresponds to the specific action which was taken to resolve the conflict.

The following conflict resolutions are currently supported for the conflict_resolution parameter:

• apply_remote - the remote (incoming) row has been applied
• skip - the processing of the row was skipped (no change has been made locally)
• merge - a new row was created, merging information from remote and local row
• user - user code (a conflict trigger) has produced the row that was written to the target table

Conflict Logging

To ease the diagnosis and handling of multi-master conflicts, BDR will, by default, log every conflict into the PostgreSQL log file. This behaviour can be changed with more granularity with the following functions.

bdr.alter_node_set_log_config

Set the conflict logging configuration for a node.

Synopsis

bdr.alter_node_set_log_config(node_name text,
                              log_to_file bool DEFAULT true,
                              log_to_table bool DEFAULT true,
                              conflict_type text[] DEFAULT NULL,
                              conflict_resolution text[] DEFAULT NULL)

Parameters

• node_name - name of the node that is being changed
• log_to_file - whether to log to the server log file
• log_to_table - whether to log to the bdr.conflict_history table
• conflict_type - which conflict types to log; NULL (the default) means all
• conflict_resolution - which conflict resolutions to log; NULL (the default) means all

Notes

Currently only the local node can be changed. The function call is not replicated. If you want to change settings on multiple nodes, the function must be run on each of them.

This function is transactional - the changes can be rolled back and are visible to the current transaction.

Listing Conflict Logging Configurations

The view bdr.node_log_config shows all the logging configurations. It lists the name of the logging configuration, where it logs and which conflict type and resolution it logs.

Logging Conflicts to a Table

Conflicts will be logged to a table if log_to_table is set to true. The target table for conflict logging is the bdr.conflict_history.

This table is range partitioned on column local_time. The table is managed by Autopartition. By default, a new partition is created for every day, and conflicts of the last 1 month are maintained. After that, the old partitions are dropped automatically. Autopartition pre-creates between 7 to 14 partitions in advance. bdr_superuser may change these defaults.

Since conflicts generated for all tables managed by BDR are logged to this table, it's important to ensure that only legitimate users can read the conflicted data. We do this by defining ROW LEVEL SECURITY policies on the bdr.conflict_history table. Only owners of the tables are allowed to read conflicts on the respective tables. If the underlying tables themselves have RLS policies defined, enabled and enforced, then even owners can't read the conflicts. RLS policies created with the FORCE option also apply to owners of the table. In that case, some or all rows in the underlying table may not be readable even to the owner. So we also enforce a stricter policy on the conflict log table.

The default role bdr_read_all_conflicts can be granted to users who need to see all conflict details logged to the bdr.conflict_history table, without also granting them bdr_superuser role.

The default role bdr_read_all_stats has access to a catalog view called bdr.conflict_history_summary which does not contain user data, allowing monitoring of any conflicts logged.

Conflict Reporting

Conflicts logged to tables can be summarized in reports. This allows application owners to identify, understand and resolve conflicts, and/or introduce application changes to prevent them.

SELECT nspname, relname
, date_trunc('day', local_time) :: date AS date
, count(*)
FROM bdr.conflict_history
WHERE local_time > date_trunc('day', current_timestamp)
GROUP BY 1,2,3
ORDER BY 1,2;

 nspname | relname |    date    | count
---------+---------+------------+-------
 my_app  | test    | 2019-04-05 |     1
(1 row)

Data Verification with LiveCompare

LiveCompare is a utility program designed to compare any two databases to verify that they are identical.

LiveCompare is included as part of the BDR Stack and can be aimed at any pair of BDR nodes and, by default, it will compare all replicated tables and report differences. LiveCompare also works with non-BDR data sources such as Postgres and Oracle.

LiveCompare can also be used to continuously monitor incoming rows. It can be stopped and started without losing context information, so it can be run at convenient times.

LiveCompare allows concurrent checking of multiple tables and can be configured to allow checking of a few tables or just a section of rows within a table. Checks are performed by first comparing whole row hashes, then if different, LiveCompare will compare whole rows. LiveCompare avoids overheads by comparing rows in useful-sized batches.

If differences are found, they can be re-checked over a period, allowing for the delays of eventual consistency.

Please refer to the LiveCompare docs for further details.

• On this page
• How conflicts happen
• Types of conflict
• Avoiding or Tolerating Conflicts
• Conflict Detection
• Conflict Resolution
• Conflict Logging
• Data Verification with LiveCompare