Eager conflict resolution v5

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Eager conflict resolution (also known as eager replication) prevents conflicts by aborting transactions that conflict with each other with serializable errors during the COMMIT decision process.

You configure it using commit scopes as one of the conflict resolution options for group commit.

Usage

To enable eager conflict resolution, the client needs to switch to a commit scope, which uses it at session level or for individual transactions as shown here:

BEGIN;

SET LOCAL bdr.commit_scope = 'eager_scope';

... other commands possible...

The client can continue to issue a COMMIT at the end of the transaction and let PGD manage the two phases:

COMMIT;

In this case, the eager_scope commit scope is defined something like this:

SELECT bdr.add_commit_scope(
    commit_scope_name := 'eager_scope',
    origin_node_group := 'top_group',
    rule := 'ALL (top_group) GROUP COMMIT (conflict_resolution = eager, commit_decision = raft) ABORT ON (timeout = 60s)',
    wait_for_ready := true
);

!!! Upgrade note The old global commit scope doesn't exist anymore. The above command creates a scope that's the same as the old global scope with bdr.global_commit_timeout set to 60s.

Error handling

Given that PGD manages the transaction, the client needs to check only the result of the COMMIT. This is advisable in any case, including single-node Postgres.

In case of an origin node failure, the remaining nodes eventually (after at least ABORT ON timeout) decide to roll back the globally prepared transaction. Raft prevents inconsistent commit versus rollback decisions. However, this requires a majority of connected nodes. Disconnected nodes keep the transactions prepared to eventually commit them (or roll back) as needed to reconcile with the majority of nodes that might have decided and made further progress.

Effects of eager replication in general

Increased commit latency

Adding a synchronization step means more communication between the nodes, resulting in more latency at commit time. Eager all-node replication adds roughly two network roundtrips (to the furthest peer node in the worst case). Logical standby nodes and nodes still in the process of joining or catching up aren't included but eventually receive changes.

Before a peer node can confirm its local preparation of the transaction, it also needs to apply it locally. This further adds to the commit latency, depending on the size of the transaction. This setting is independent of the synchronous_commit setting.

Increased abort rate

With single-node Postgres, or even with PGD in its default asynchronous replication mode, errors at COMMIT time are rare. The added synchronization step adds a source of errors, so applications need to be prepared to properly handle such errors (usually by applying a retry loop).

The rate of aborts depends solely on the workload. Large transactions changing many rows are much more likely to conflict with other concurrent transactions.

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Conflict-free replicated data types