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Instrument usage stack v18 - #81

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instrument-usage-stack-v18
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instrument-usage-stack-v18

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@lfittl lfittl commented Oct 3, 2026

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lfittl added 10 commits October 2, 2026 21:19
This replaces different repeated code blocks that read pgBufferUsage /
pgWalUsage, and may have also been running a timer to measure activity,
with the new Instrumentation struct and associated helpers.

Author: Lukas Fittl <lukas@fittl.com>
Reviewed-by:
Discussion:
…ith INSTR_* macros

This encapsulates the ownership of these globals better, and will allow
a subsequent refactoring.

Author: Lukas Fittl <lukas@fittl.com>
Reviewed-by: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Reviewed-by: Zsolt Parragi <zsolt.parragi@percona.com>
Discussion: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/CAP53PkzZ3UotnRrrnXWAv%3DF4avRq9MQ8zU%2BbxoN9tpovEu6fGQ%40mail.gmail.com#fc7140e8af21e07a90a09d7e76b300c4
This adds regression tests that cover some of the expected behaviour
around the buffer statistics reported in EXPLAIN ANALYZE, specifically
how they behave in parallel query, nested function calls and abort
situations.

Testing this is challenging because there can be different sources of
buffer activity, so we rely on temporary tables where we can to prove
that activity was captured and not lost. This supports a future commit
that will rework some of the instrumentation logic that could cause
areas covered by these tests to fail.

Author: Lukas Fittl <lukas@fittl.com>
Reviewed-by:
Discussion:
Previously, in order to determine the buffer/WAL usage of a given code
section, we utilized continuously incrementing global counters that get
updated when the actual activity (e.g. shared block read) occurred, and
then calculated a diff when the code section ended. This resulted in a
bottleneck for executor node instrumentation specifically, with the
function BufferUsageAccumDiff showing up in profiles and in some cases
adding up to 10% overhead to an EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS) run.

Instead, introduce a stack-based mechanism, where the actual activity
writes into the current stack entry. In the case of executor nodes, this
means that each node gets its own stack entry that is pushed at
InstrStartNode, and popped at InstrEndNode. Stack entries are zero
initialized (avoiding the diff mechanism) and get added to their parent
entry when they are finalized, i.e. no more modifications can occur.

To correctly handle abort situations, any use of instrumentation stacks
must involve either a top-level QueryInstrumentation struct, and its
associated InstrQueryStart/InstrQueryStop helpers (which use resource
owners to handle aborts), or the Instrumentation struct itself with
dedicated PG_TRY/PG_FINALLY calls that ensure the stack is in a
consistent state after an abort.

In tests, the stack-based instrumentation mechanism reduces the overhead
of EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS ON, TIMING OFF) for a large COUNT(*) query
from about 50% to 22% on top of the actual runtime.

Callers of the plain Instrumentation API (InstrAlloc/InstrInitOptions
with InstrStart/InstrStop) keep measuring by diffing the global
pgBufferUsage/pgWalUsage counters for now.

Author: Lukas Fittl <lukas@fittl.com>
Reviewed-by: Zsolt Parragi <zsolt.parragi@percona.com>
Reviewed-by: Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka@iki.fi>
Discussion: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/CAP53PkxrmpECzVFpeeEEHDGe6u625s%2BYkmVv5-gw3L_NDSfbiA%40mail.gmail.com#cb583a08e8e096aa1f093bb178906173
…Usage

The stack-based instrumentation left the plain Instrumentation API
(InstrAlloc/InstrInitOptions with InstrStart/InstrStop) measuring by
diffing the global pgBufferUsage/pgWalUsage counters, and kept
pgBufferUsage updated alongside the stack for that purpose.

Convert the remaining users of that API to the stack: VACUUM and ANALYZE
logging as well as the planning-time measurement of EXPLAIN and EXECUTE
use QueryInstrumentation, which handles aborts through the resource
owner, while pg_stat_statements wraps its planner and utility statement
timing in PG_TRY/PG_FINALLY and the EXPLAIN destination receiver
finalizes its entry into the current stack entry.

With that, Instrumentation entries always track WAL/buffer usage through
the stack, so remove the diff mode along with the global pgBufferUsage
and BufferUsageAccumDiff, and update comments that referred to it.
Extensions that read pgBufferUsage directly should use InstrStart and
InstrStop around the code section they want to measure instead.

The related global pgWalUsage is kept for now due to its use in pgstat
to track aggregate WAL activity and heap_page_prune_and_freeze for
measuring FPIs.

Author: Lukas Fittl <lukas@fittl.com>
Reviewed-by:
Discussion:
This simplifies the DSM allocations a bit since we don't need to
separately allocate WAL and buffer usage, and allows the easier future
addition of a third stack-based struct being discussed.

Author: Lukas Fittl <lukas@fittl.com>
Reviewed-by:
Discussion:
For most queries, the bulk of the overhead of EXPLAIN ANALYZE happens in
ExecProcNodeInstr when starting/stopping instrumentation for that node.

Previously each ExecProcNodeInstr would check which instrumentation
options are active in the InstrStartNode/InstrStopNode calls, and do the
corresponding work (timers, instrumentation stack, etc.). These
conditionals being checked for each tuple being emitted add up, and cause
non-optimal set of instructions to be generated by the compiler.

Because we already have an existing mechanism to specify a function
pointer when instrumentation is enabled, we can instead create specialized
functions that are tailored to the instrumentation options enabled, and
avoid conditionals on subsequent ExecProcNodeInstr calls. This results in
the overhead for EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, TIMING OFF, BUFFERS OFF) for a stress
test with a large COUNT(*) that does many ExecProcNode calls from ~ 20% on
top of actual runtime to ~ 3%. When using BUFFERS ON the same query goes
from ~ 20% to ~ 10% on top of actual runtime.

Author: Lukas Fittl <lukas@fittl.com>
Reviewed-by: Zsolt Parragi <zsolt.parragi@percona.com>
Discussion: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/CAP53PkxFP7i7-wy98ZmEJ11edYq-RrPvJoa4kzGhBBjERA4Nyw%40mail.gmail.com#e8dfd018a07d7f8d41565a079d40c564

fix up execprocnode 2
pg_stat_database's blk_read_time and blk_write_time were accumulated in
the backend-local counters pgStatBlockReadTime and pgStatBlockWriteTime,
which pgstat_count_io_op_time() incremented alongside the equivalent
fields of the current instrumentation stack entry. With the stack-based
instrumentation the session-level totals are available in instr_top, so
the separate counters are redundant.

Remove the counters and the pgstat_count_buffer_read_time() and
pgstat_count_buffer_write_time() macros, and instead have
pgstat_update_dbstats() compute the increase of the shared and local
block read/write times in instr_top since the previous report. This
covers the same activity as before: relation and temp relation reads,
writes and extends, but not temporary file I/O or WAL I/O.

instr_top is only updated when an instrumentation stack entry is
finalized, but pgstat_report_stat() is only called when a backend is
idle outside of a transaction block, after each autovacuum relation, or
at process exit, all points where the stack is empty, so nothing is
missed.

Parallel workers account for their own activity in their own instr_top
and report it themselves, like before. The leader additionally imports
the workers' usage into its stack for query-level consumers such as
EXPLAIN and pg_stat_statements, and thus into its instr_top. To count
each activity exactly once, track everything imported from workers in
the new instr_from_workers, updated at the same points as the import,
and subtract it from instr_top when reporting.

Since the amounts are now computed as a difference of the session
totals, these totals must never be reset.

Author: Lukas Fittl <lukas@fittl.com>
Reviewed-by:
Discussion:
This sets up a separate instrumentation stack that is used whilst an
Index Scan or Index Only Scan does scanning on the table, for example due
to additional data being needed.

EXPLAIN ANALYZE will now show "Table Buffers" that represent such activity.
The activity is also included in regular "Buffers" together with index
activity and that of any child nodes.

Author: Lukas Fittl <lukas@fittl.com>
Suggested-by: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Reviewed-by: Zsolt Parragi <zsolt.parragi@percona.com>
Reviewed-by: Tomas Vondra <tomas@vondra.me>
Discussion: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/CAP53PkxrmpECzVFpeeEEHDGe6u625s%2BYkmVv5-gw3L_NDSfbiA%40mail.gmail.com#cb583a08e8e096aa1f093bb178906173
This is intended for testing instrumentation related logic as it pertains
to the top level stack that is maintained as a running total. There is
currently no in-core user that utilizes the top-level values in this
manner, and especially during abort situations this helps ensure we don't
lose activity due to incorrect handling of unfinalized node stacks.
@lfittl
lfittl force-pushed the instrument-usage-stack-v18 branch from cbcf577 to 8ef30a4 Compare October 3, 2026 17:01
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