We have long forbidden fetching backwards from a NO SCROLL cursor,
but the prohibition didn't extend to cases in which we rewind the
query altogether and then re-fetch forwards. I think the reason is
that this logic was mainly meant to protect plan nodes that can't
be run in the reverse direction. However, re-reading the query output
is problematic if the query is volatile (which includes SELECT FOR
UPDATE, not just queries with volatile functions): the re-read can
produce different results, which confuses the cursor navigation logic
completely. Another reason for disliking this approach is that some
code paths will either fetch backwards or rewind-and-fetch-forwards
depending on the distance to the target row; so that seemingly
identical use-cases may or may not draw the "cursor can only scan
forward" error. Hence, let's clean things up by disallowing rewind
as well as fetch-backwards in a NO SCROLL cursor.
Ordinarily we'd only make such a definitional change in HEAD, but
there is a third reason to consider this change now. Commit ba2c6d6ce
created some new user-visible anomalies for non-scrollable cursors
WITH HOLD, in that navigation in the cursor result got confused if the
cursor had been partially read before committing. The only good way
to resolve those anomalies is to forbid rewinding such a cursor, which
allows removal of the incorrect cursor state manipulations that
ba2c6d6ce added to PersistHoldablePortal.
To minimize the behavioral change in the back branches (including
v14), refuse to rewind a NO SCROLL cursor only when it has a holdStore,
ie has been held over from a previous transaction due to WITH HOLD.
This should avoid breaking most applications that have been sloppy
about whether to declare cursors as scrollable. We'll enforce the
prohibition across-the-board beginning in v15.
Back-patch to v11, as ba2c6d6ce was.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/3712911.1631207435@sss.pgh.pa.us
The original implementation of TABLESAMPLE modeled the tablesample method
API on index access methods, which wasn't a good choice because, without
specialized DDL commands, there's no way to build an extension that can
implement a TSM. (Raw inserts into system catalogs are not an acceptable
thing to do, because we can't undo them during DROP EXTENSION, nor will
pg_upgrade behave sanely.) Instead adopt an API more like procedural
language handlers or foreign data wrappers, wherein the only SQL-level
support object needed is a single handler function identified by having
a special return type. This lets us get rid of the supporting catalog
altogether, so that no custom DDL support is needed for the feature.
Adjust the API so that it can support non-constant tablesample arguments
(the original coding assumed we could evaluate the argument expressions at
ExecInitSampleScan time, which is undesirable even if it weren't outright
unsafe), and discourage sampling methods from looking at invisible tuples.
Make sure that the BERNOULLI and SYSTEM methods are genuinely repeatable
within and across queries, as required by the SQL standard, and deal more
honestly with methods that can't support that requirement.
Make a full code-review pass over the tablesample additions, and fix
assorted bugs, omissions, infelicities, and cosmetic issues (such as
failure to put the added code stanzas in a consistent ordering).
Improve EXPLAIN's output of tablesample plans, too.
Back-patch to 9.5 so that we don't have to support the original API
in production.
Add a TABLESAMPLE clause to SELECT statements that allows
user to specify random BERNOULLI sampling or block level
SYSTEM sampling. Implementation allows for extensible
sampling functions to be written, using a standard API.
Basic version follows SQLStandard exactly. Usable
concrete use cases for the sampling API follow in later
commits.
Petr Jelinek
Reviewed by Michael Paquier and Simon Riggs
