Introduce CompactAttribute array in TupleDesc, take 2

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.

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

1 files changed, 104 insertions, 14 deletions

diff --git a/src/backend/access/common/tupdesc.c b/src/backend/access/common/tupdesc.c
index 47379fef220..4d89acbe5e2 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
+ *		Fill 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 +101,20 @@ 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 FormData_pg_attribute.
 	 *
-	 * 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
-	 * 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.
+	 * Note: the FormData_pg_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 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));
 
 	/*
@@ -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 +186,54 @@ 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 */
+	desc->tdtypeid = tupdesc->tdtypeid;
+	desc->tdtypmod = tupdesc->tdtypmod;
+
+	return desc;
+}
+
+/*
+ * CreateTupleDescTruncatedCopy
+ *		This function creates a new TupleDesc with only the first 'natts'
+ *		attributes from an existing TupleDesc
+ *
+ * !!! Constraints and defaults are not copied !!!
+ */
+TupleDesc
+CreateTupleDescTruncatedCopy(TupleDesc tupdesc, int natts)
+{
+	TupleDesc	desc;
+	int			i;
+
+	Assert(natts <= tupdesc->natts);
+
+	desc = CreateTemplateTupleDesc(natts);
+
+	/* Flat-copy the attribute array */
+	memcpy(TupleDescAttr(desc, 0),
+		   TupleDescAttr(tupdesc, 0),
+		   desc->natts * sizeof(FormData_pg_attribute));
+
+	/*
+	 * Since we're not copying constraints and defaults, clear fields
+	 * associated with them.
+	 */
+	for (i = 0; i < desc->natts; i++)
+	{
+		Form_pg_attribute att = TupleDescAttr(desc, i);
+
+		att->attnotnull = false;
+		att->atthasdef = false;
+		att->atthasmissing = false;
+		att->attidentity = '\0';
+		att->attgenerated = '\0';
+
+		populate_compact_attribute(desc, i);
 	}
 
 	/* We can copy the tuple type identification, too */
@@ -183,6 +262,9 @@ 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 +289,7 @@ 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,
@@ -252,7 +334,7 @@ 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));
 
 	/*
@@ -268,6 +350,8 @@ TupleDescCopy(TupleDesc dst, TupleDesc src)
 		att->atthasmissing = false;
 		att->attidentity = '\0';
 		att->attgenerated = '\0';
+
+		populate_compact_attribute(dst, i);
 	}
 	dst->constr = NULL;
 
@@ -322,6 +406,8 @@ TupleDescCopyEntry(TupleDesc dst, AttrNumber dstAttno,
 	dstAtt->atthasmissing = false;
 	dstAtt->attidentity = '\0';
 	dstAtt->attgenerated = '\0';
+
+	populate_compact_attribute(dst, dstAttno - 1);
 }
 
 /*
@@ -521,7 +607,7 @@ 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 +800,8 @@ TupleDescInitEntry(TupleDesc desc,
 	att->attcompression = InvalidCompressionMethod;
 	att->attcollation = typeForm->typcollation;
 
+	populate_compact_attribute(desc, attributeNumber - 1);
+
 	ReleaseSysCache(tuple);
 }
 
@@ -821,6 +909,8 @@ TupleDescInitBuiltinEntry(TupleDesc desc,
 		default:
 			elog(ERROR, "unsupported type %u", oidtypeid);
 	}
+
+	populate_compact_attribute(desc, attributeNumber - 1);
 }
 
 /*