On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 7:06 PM, Scott Marlowe <scott.marlowe@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 6:59 PM, Scott Marlowe <scott.marlowe@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 6:10 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >>> Craig James <cjames@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: >>>> I want to do this: >>> >>>> select setval('object_id_seq', nextval('object_id_seq') + 1000, false); >>> >>>> Now suppose two processes do this simultaneously. Maybe they're in >>>> transactions, maybe they're not. Are they guaranteed to get distinct >>>> blocks of IDs? >>> >>> No, because the setval and the nextval are not indivisible. >>> >>>> Or is it possible that each will execute nextval() and >>>> get N and N+1 respectively, and then do setval() to N+1000 and N+1001, >>>> resulting in two overlapping blocks. >>> >>> Exactly. >>> >>>> If the answer is, "This won't work," then what's a better way to do this? >>> >>> AFAIK the only way at the moment is >>> >>> * acquire some advisory lock that by convention you use for this sequence >>> * advance the sequence >>> * release advisory lock >>> >>> There have been previous discussions of this type of problem, eg >>> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2011-09/msg01031.php >>> but the topic doesn't seem to have come up quite often enough to >>> motivate anybody to do anything about it. Your particular case could be >>> handled by a variant of nextval() with a number-of-times-to-advance >>> argument, but I'm not sure if that's enough for other scenarios. >> >> If the OP could live with large gaps in his sequence, he could set it >> to advance by say 1000 at a time, and then use the numbers in that gap >> freely. Just a thought. > > Better yet set cache = 1000; here's an example: > > create sequence a cache 1000; > T1: select nextval('a'); > 1 > T2: select nextval('a'); > 1001 > T1: select nextval('a'); > 2 > T2: select nextval('a'); > 1002 > > and so on. > > Now can he just select nextval('a'); 1000 times in a loop? Or would > he prefer another method. > > I guess I'm kind of wondering which problem he's trying to solve. Made a sequence: create sequence a; then ran a one line select nextval('a'); against it 1000 times from bash, i.e. the worst vase performance scenario: time for ((i=0;i<1000;i++));do psql -f t1 > /dev/null;done real 1m1.978s user 0m41.999s sys 0m12.277s then I ran it a singe time on a file with 1000 select nextvals: time psql -f t1000 > /dev/null real 0m0.486s user 0m0.112s sys 0m0.036s Then I recreated sequence a: create sequence a cache 1000; and ran it again: time psql -f t1000 > /dev/null real 0m0.293s user 0m0.120s sys 0m0.024s I'd imagine in a real programming oangua -- Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance