how to chain postgres RULEs? I have implemented data denormalization strategy using postgresql RULEs. I picked rules instead of triggers for performance reasons.



Schema is structured like this:


Application has many clients
Client has many projects
Project has many users


One part of the system is storing hits for every user in stats table. Hit is an imaginary metric, it is not really relevant. System can collect many of these metrics. There are a lot of records in stats table (> 1,000,000 per day). 

I want to know how many hits are per user, per project, per client and per application for given day.

To make it work fast, I've groupped stats by day and stored the output into user_hits table. During this process, also the application_id, client_id and project_id has been added (as columns), and appropriate indexes created. 

I want to further optimise the process by grouping things by project_id, client_id and finally application_id. The data pipeline is like this:

stats -&gt; user_hits -&gt; project_hits -&gt; client_hits -&gt; application_hits

I want to make sure when I delete the data from user_hits for given day, that the data in project_hits for that same date is also deleted. This process should propagate to last table in chain.

I defined these simple rules:

CREATE RULE delete_children AS ON DELETE TO user_hits
  DO ALSO
  DELETE FROM project_hits WHERE day = OLD.day;

CREATE RULE delete_children AS ON DELETE TO project_hits
  DO ALSO
  DELETE FROM client_hits WHERE day = OLD.day;

CREATE RULE delete_children AS ON DELETE TO client_hits
  DO ALSO
  DELETE FROM application_hits WHERE day = OLD.day;


However, when I issue statement like this:

DELETE FROM user_hits WHERE day = current_date;


I expect it to run these 3 queries in return:

DELETE FROM project_hits WHERE day = current_date;
DELETE FROM client_hits WHERE day = current_date;
DELETE FROM application_hits WHERE day = current_date;


However, it doesn't.

It completes the operation, but it takes couple of minutes to do that (with test data). With real data it takes hours, while running those 3 queries by hand takes couple of milliseconds.
The time it takes seems proportional to number of combinations (users x projects x clients x applications).

What is the problem here? Am I missing something? Can this be implemented with triggers in an optimised way?



Included sample script which reproduces the problem:

https://gist.github.com/assembler/5151102



UPDATE: Transition from user_hits to project_hits (and so forth) is done by worker process in background (since it involves contacting 3rd party services for additional info). It is smart enough to recalculate everything for missing dates. So the only thing i need is a way to DELETE records cascadingly in optimised way.



UPDATE: stats table is filled on daily basis. The only possible scenario is to unconditionally delete the data for whole day and then replace it with new values.



UPDATE: I noticed that the number of affected rows (extracted from explain statement) is exactly equal to the product of affected rows in user_hits, project_hits, client_hits, and application_hits tables (hundreds of millions of rows).

It turns out that it works like this:


I run DELETE FROM user_hits WHERE day = current_date;
For each row in user_hits table, RULE is triggered which deletes EVERY row from project_hits
For each row of project_hits, RULE is triggered which deletes EVERY row from client_hits
For each row of client_hits, RULE is triggered which deletes EVERY row from application_hits


So, the number of operations is equal to the product of count of affected rows in these tables.
Next time, please include the EXPLAIN output rather than making us dig for it in your scripts.  There's no guarantee my system is using the same plan as yours (although with your test data it is likely).

The rule system here is working properly.  First, the I want to include my own diagnostic queries (note I did not run EXPLAIN ANALYSE since I was just interested in what query plan was generated):

rulestest=# explain DELETE FROM user_hits WHERE day = '2013-03-16';
                                              QUERY PLAN                        

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------
 Delete on application_hits  (cost=0.00..3953181.85 rows=316094576 width=24)
   -&gt;  Nested Loop  (cost=0.00..3953181.85 rows=316094576 width=24)
         -&gt;  Seq Scan on user_hits  (cost=0.00..1887.00 rows=49763 width=10)
               Filter: (day = '2013-03-16'::date)
         -&gt;  Materialize  (cost=0.00..128.53 rows=6352 width=22)
               -&gt;  Nested Loop  (cost=0.00..96.78 rows=6352 width=22)
                     -&gt;  Seq Scan on project_hits  (cost=0.00..14.93 rows=397 wi
dth=10)
                           Filter: (day = '2013-03-16'::date)
                     -&gt;  Materialize  (cost=0.00..2.49 rows=16 width=16)
                           -&gt;  Nested Loop  (cost=0.00..2.41 rows=16 width=16)
                                 -&gt;  Seq Scan on application_hits  (cost=0.00..1
.10 rows=4 width=10)
                                       Filter: (day = '2013-03-16'::date)
                                 -&gt;  Materialize  (cost=0.00..1.12 rows=4 width=
10)
                                       -&gt;  Seq Scan on client_hits  (cost=0.00..
1.10 rows=4 width=10)
                                             Filter: (day = '2013-03-16'::date)

 Delete on client_hits  (cost=0.00..989722.41 rows=79023644 width=18)
   -&gt;  Nested Loop  (cost=0.00..989722.41 rows=79023644 width=18)
         -&gt;  Seq Scan on user_hits  (cost=0.00..1887.00 rows=49763 width=10)
               Filter: (day = '2013-03-16'::date)
         -&gt;  Materialize  (cost=0.00..43.83 rows=1588 width=16)
               -&gt;  Nested Loop  (cost=0.00..35.89 rows=1588 width=16)
                     -&gt;  Seq Scan on project_hits  (cost=0.00..14.93 rows=397 wi
dth=10)
                           Filter: (day = '2013-03-16'::date)
                     -&gt;  Materialize  (cost=0.00..1.12 rows=4 width=10)
                           -&gt;  Seq Scan on client_hits  (cost=0.00..1.10 rows=4 
width=10)
                                 Filter: (day = '2013-03-16'::date)

 Delete on project_hits  (cost=0.00..248851.80 rows=19755911 width=12)
   -&gt;  Nested Loop  (cost=0.00..248851.80 rows=19755911 width=12)
         -&gt;  Seq Scan on user_hits  (cost=0.00..1887.00 rows=49763 width=10)
               Filter: (day = '2013-03-16'::date)
         -&gt;  Materialize  (cost=0.00..16.91 rows=397 width=10)
               -&gt;  Seq Scan on project_hits  (cost=0.00..14.93 rows=397 width=10
)
                     Filter: (day = '2013-03-16'::date)

 Delete on user_hits  (cost=0.00..1887.00 rows=49763 width=6)
   -&gt;  Seq Scan on user_hits  (cost=0.00..1887.00 rows=49763 width=6)
         Filter: (day = '2013-03-16'::date)
(39 rows)

rulestest=# select distinct day from application_hits;
    day     
------------
 2013-03-15
 2013-03-16
(2 rows)

rulestest=# select count(*), day from application_hits group by day;
 count |    day     
-------+------------
     4 | 2013-03-15
     4 | 2013-03-16
(2 rows)

rulestest=# select count(*), day from client_hits group by day;
 count |    day     
-------+------------
     4 | 2013-03-15
     4 | 2013-03-16
(2 rows)

rulestest=# select count(*), day from project_hits group by day;
 count |    day     
-------+------------
   397 | 2013-03-15
   397 | 2013-03-16
(2 rows)


If your data is anything like your existing data, neither rules nor triggers will work very well.  Better will be a stored procedure which you pass a value and it deletes everything you want.

First let's note that indexes here will get you nowhere because in all cases you are pulling half of the tables (I did add indexes on day on all tables to help the planner but this made no real difference).

You need to start with what you are doing with RULEs.  RULEs basically rewrite queries and they do so using ways that are as robust as possible.  Your code also doesn't match your example though it matches your question better.  You have rules on tables which cascade to rules on other tables which cascade to rules on other tables

Therefore when you delete from user_hits where [criteria], the rules transform this into a set of queries:

DELETE FROM application_hits 
 WHERE day IN (SELECT day FROM client_hits 
               WHERE day IN (SELECT day FROM user_hits WHERE [condition]));
DELETE FROM client_hits
  WHERE day IN (SELECT day FROM user_hits WHERE [condition]);
DELETE FROM user_hits WHERE [condition];


Now, you might think we could skip the scan on client_hits in the first, but that isn't what happens here.  The problem is that you could have days in user_hits and application_hits that are not in client_hits so you really have to scan all tables.

Now here there is no magic bullet.  A trigger isn't going to work much better because, while it gets to avoid scanning every table, it gets fired every row that gets deleted so you basically end up with the same nested loop sequential scans that are currently killing performance.  It will work a bit better because it will delete rows along the way rather than rewriting the query along the way, but it isn't going to perform very well.

A much better solution is to just define a stored procedure and have the application call that.  Something like:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION delete_stats_at_date(in_day date) RETURNS BOOL 
LANGUAGE SQL AS
$$
DELETE FROM application_hits WHERE day = $1;
DELETE FROM project_hits WHERE day = $1;
DELETE FROM client_hits WHERE day  = $1;
DELETE FROM user_hits WHERE day = $1;
SELECT TRUE;
$$;


On the test data this runs in 280 ms on my laptop.

One of the hard things regarding RULEs is remembering what they are and noting that the computer cannot, in fact, read your mind.  This is why I would not consider them a beginner's tool.