Allow logical decoding on standbys

Unsurprisingly, this requires wal_level = logical to be set on the primary and
standby. The infrastructure added in 26669757b6a ensures that slots are
invalidated if the primary's wal_level is lowered.

Creating a slot on a standby waits for a xl_running_xact record to be
processed. If the primary is idle (and thus not emitting xl_running_xact
records), that can take a while.  To make that faster, this commit also
introduces the pg_log_standby_snapshot() function. By executing it on the
primary, completion of slot creation on the standby can be accelerated.

Note that logical decoding on a standby does not itself enforce that required
catalog rows are not removed. The user has to use physical replication slots +
hot_standby_feedback or other measures to prevent that. If catalog rows
required for a slot are removed, the slot is invalidated.

See 6af1793954e for an overall design of logical decoding on a standby.

Bumps catversion, for the addition of the pg_log_standby_snapshot() function.

Author: "Drouvot, Bertrand" <bertranddrouvot.pg@gmail.com>
Author: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> (in an older version)
Author: Amit Khandekar <amitdkhan.pg@gmail.com> (in an older version)
Reviewed-by: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Reviewed-by: FabrÌzio de Royes Mello <fabriziomello@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Amit Kapila <amit.kapila16@gmail.com>
Reviewed-By: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>

1 files changed, 11 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/src/backend/access/transam/xlog.c b/src/backend/access/transam/xlog.c
index 1b7c2f23a41..b540ee293b6 100644
--- a/src/backend/access/transam/xlog.c
+++ b/src/backend/access/transam/xlog.c
@@ -4470,6 +4470,17 @@ LocalProcessControlFile(bool reset)
 }
 
 /*
+ * Get the wal_level from the control file. For a standby, this value should be
+ * considered as its active wal_level, because it may be different from what
+ * was originally configured on standby.
+ */
+WalLevel
+GetActiveWalLevelOnStandby(void)
+{
+	return ControlFile->wal_level;
+}
+
+/*
  * Initialization of shared memory for XLOG
  */
 Size