"Kevin Grittner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > What happens if the timestamp of the commit is an exact match for the > timestamp of the next transaction start? What is the resolution of > the time sampling?
It's not done via timestamps: rather, each transaction takes a census of the transaction XIDs that are running in other backends when it starts (there is an array in shared memory that lets it get this information cheaply). Reliability of the system clock is not a factor. Are you sure the server is 8.0.3? There was a bug in prior releases that might possibly be related: 2005-05-07 17:22 tgl * src/backend/utils/time/: tqual.c (REL7_3_STABLE), tqual.c (REL7_4_STABLE), tqual.c (REL7_2_STABLE), tqual.c (REL8_0_STABLE), tqual.c: Adjust time qual checking code so that we always check TransactionIdIsInProgress before we check commit/abort status. Formerly this was done in some paths but not all, with the result that a transaction might be considered committed for some purposes before it became committed for others. Per example found by Jan Wieck. My recollection though is that this only affected applications that were using SELECT FOR UPDATE. In any case, it's pretty hard to see how this would affect an application that is in fact waiting for the backend to report commit-done before it launches the next transaction; the race-condition window we were concerned about no longer exists by the time the backend sends CommandComplete. So my suspicion remains fixed on that point. Do you have any way of sniffing the network traffic of the middle-tier to confirm that it's doing what it's supposed to? regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match