Snippets

Postgres

Get cell as file

Use With CSV for CSV files.

\copy (Select * From foo) To 'test.csv' With BINARY;

XMLs, manually remove | from the front and end of the file:

\copy (SELECT xml_field FROM table_name) TO 'output.xml' WITH CSV QUOTE AS '|';

Disk Space

Free up disk space:

vacuumdb --all --full --freeze

List total table sizes (including indexes):

SELECT nspname || '.' || relname AS "relation",
    pg_size_pretty(pg_total_relation_size(C.oid)) AS "total_size"
  FROM pg_class C
  LEFT JOIN pg_namespace N ON (N.oid = C.relnamespace)
  WHERE nspname NOT IN ('pg_catalog', 'information_schema')
    AND C.relkind <> 'i'
    AND nspname !~ '^pg_toast'
  ORDER BY pg_total_relation_size(C.oid) DESC
  LIMIT 20;

Bulk Insert with two columns matching sequence value

Note this doesn't work LOL. func.nextval('outbound_messages_transaction_id_seq') + 1 may need to be -1, and I don't know how you can work out which one (+1 or -1) it should be. Apparently postgres has a column order, but it doesn't seem to be respected.

I had a table with two columns: transaction_id and xml, but the xml text also contains the transaction_id. If you generate the transaction_id value client-side, then you can of course set the two columns on your INSERT.

However, I wanted the transaction_id value to be a "semi-unique" identifier. It is semi-unique because an external system requires a value between 1-999,999,999 only. So, for that column I use a bounded Integer Sequence that will cycle back to 1 when it reaches the maximum value of 999,999,999.

Then, the problem is how to generate the XML without knowing the transaction_id that will be generated when the database does the INSERT?

One approach that I tried was to do the bulk-insert, returning the transaction_ids. Then to do another UPDATE replacing the XMLs. I found the built-in replace was good enough if the placeholder was sufficiently unique, but had to cast the integer transaction_id to a string for it to work (no auto-casts for you!). It has to wrapped in a transaction of course.

(I had originally casted it to CHAR, but that just results in a single character...)

insert_records = outbound_message_df.to_dict('records')
with session.begin_nested():
    result = session.execute(
        cls.__table.insert(
            values=insert_records
        ).returning(
            cls.id,
        )
    )
    ids = [row[0] for row in result.fetchall()]

    fix_transaction_ids = '''
        UPDATE
            outbound_messages
        SET
            xml = replace(xml, 'X_override_transaction_id', transaction_id::TEXT)
        WHERE
            id in :ids
    '''
    session.execute(fix_transaction_ids, params={'ids': ids})

This worked, but I thought that it seemed inefficient. The solution that I came to was to replace the XML string on the INSERT using database functions:

INSERT INTO  
    outbound_messages (xml)   
VALUES  
    (replace('<xml version...' , 'X_override_transaction_id', currval('outbound_messages_transaction_id_seq')::TEXT))  
;

This SQL inserts the real XML string. but replaces the placeholder X_override_transaction_id with the correct value of transaction_id!

Or with SQLAlchemy, doing a simultaneous multi-insert:

@classmethod
def substitute_func(xml):
    return func.replace(
        xml,
        'X_override_transaction_id',
        cast(func.currval('outbound_messages_transaction_id_seq'), String),
    )

    outbound_message_df['xml'] = outbound_message_df['xml'].map(substitute_func)
    insert_records = outbound_message_df.to_dict('records')
    return cls.__table__.insert(values=insert_records)

However, this fails when giving multiple values because the current value is fixed across all the rows! It seems to be very difficult to get a sequence during an insert per row-value. Instead, we can get the next value for the sequence, which happens sequentially for the rows, and offset it by one.

INSERT INTO  
    opera_outbound_messages (xml, created_utc, updated_utc)   
VALUES  
    (replace('A-OVERRIDE' , 'OVERRIDE', (nextval('outbound_messages_transaction_id_seq') + 1)::text), now(), now()),
    (replace('B-OVERRIDE' , 'OVERRIDE', (nextval('outbound_messages_transaction_id_seq') + 1)::text), now(), now()),
    (replace('B-OVERRIDE' , 'OVERRIDE', (nextval('outbound_messages_transaction_id_seq') + 1)::text), now(), now())
;
SELECT transaction_id, xml from outbound_messages;

With this SQL query, the database obtains the value for xml using the next value for the sequence, e.g. 1. Then obtains the next value for the column transaction_id, i.e. 2. This is done row-by-row so we get consistent values.We offset the first value to match the second value, so we get 2, 2.

We note that this sequence cycles, so it's important that when we add one to the sequence value for xml, that it wraps around appropriately. This will be fine so long as when you add one, you do not need to wrap.

So we must use something like: minvalue=2, maxvalue=99, cycle=True. Start on an even number and end on an odd number! (Or the other way around if you want to start at 2 rather than 3.)

The equivalent SQLAlchemy:

transaction_id_seq = Sequence(
    'outbound_messages_transaction_id_seq',
    minvalue=2,
    maxvalue=999999999,
    cycle=True,
    metadata=Base.metadata,
)
transaction_id = Column(
    Integer,
    # Do NOT set the value client-side because it messes up the bulk insert.
    # default=transaction_id_seq,
    server_default=transaction_id_seq.next_value(),
    nullable=False,
)

@classmethod
def substitute_func(xml):
    return func.replace(
        xml,
        'X_override_transaction_id',
        cast(func.nextval('outbound_messages_transaction_id_seq') + 1, String),
    )

    outbound_message_df['xml'] = outbound_message_df['xml'].map(substitute_func)
    insert_records = outbound_message_df.to_dict('records')
    return cls.__table__.insert(values=insert_records)

Note: SQLAlchemy's comment on server-side vs client-side sequences.

Placement of the Sequence in both the Python-side and server-side default generation contexts ensures that the “primary key fetch” logic works in all cases. Typically, sequence-enabled databases also support RETURNING for INSERT statements, which is used automatically by SQLAlchemy when emitting this statement. However if RETURNING is not used for a particular insert, then SQLAlchemy would prefer to “pre-execute” the sequence outside of the INSERT statement itself, which only works if the sequence is included as the Python-side default generator function.

You could possibly go to the effort of making the sequence sequential (1, 2, 3, ...).

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