Add new block-by-block strategy for CREATE DATABASE.

Because this strategy logs changes on a block-by-block basis, it
avoids the need to checkpoint before and after the operation.
However, because it logs each changed block individually, it might
generate a lot of extra write-ahead logging if the template database
is large. Therefore, the older strategy remains available via a new
STRATEGY parameter to CREATE DATABASE, and a corresponding --strategy
option to createdb.

Somewhat controversially, this patch assembles the list of relations
to be copied to the new database by reading the pg_class relation of
the template database. Cross-database access like this isn't normally
possible, but it can be made to work here because there can't be any
connections to the database being copied, nor can it contain any
in-doubt transactions. Even so, we have to use lower-level interfaces
than normal, since the table scan and relcache interfaces will not
work for a database to which we're not connected. The advantage of
this approach is that we do not need to rely on the filesystem to
determine what ought to be copied, but instead on PostgreSQL's own
knowledge of the database structure. This avoids, for example,
copying stray files that happen to be located in the source database
directory.

Dilip Kumar, with a fairly large number of cosmetic changes by me.
Reviewed and tested by Ashutosh Sharma, Andres Freund, John Naylor,
Greg Nancarrow, Neha Sharma. Additional feedback from Bruce Momjian,
Heikki Linnakangas, Julien Rouhaud, Adam Brusselback, Kyotaro
Horiguchi, Tomas Vondra, Andrew Dunstan, Álvaro Herrera, and others.

Discussion: http://postgr.es/m/CA+TgmoYtcdxBjLh31DLxUXHxFVMPGzrU5_T=CYCvRyFHywSBUQ@mail.gmail.com

3 files changed, 37 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/monitoring.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/monitoring.sgml
index 6a6b09dc456..3b9172f65bd 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/monitoring.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/monitoring.sgml
@@ -1503,6 +1503,10 @@ postgres   27093  0.0  0.0  30096  2752 ?        Ss   11:34   0:00 postgres: ser
       <entry>Waiting for a write of a two phase state file.</entry>
      </row>
      <row>
+      <entry><literal>VersionFileWrite</literal></entry>
+      <entry>Waiting for the version file to be written while creating a database.</entry>
+     </row>
+     <row>
       <entry><literal>WALBootstrapSync</literal></entry>
       <entry>Waiting for WAL to reach durable storage during
        bootstrapping.</entry>
diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/ref/create_database.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/ref/create_database.sgml
index 5ae785ab95a..255ad3a1ce0 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/ref/create_database.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/ref/create_database.sgml
@@ -25,6 +25,7 @@ CREATE DATABASE <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable>
     [ [ WITH ] [ OWNER [=] <replaceable class="parameter">user_name</replaceable> ]
            [ TEMPLATE [=] <replaceable class="parameter">template</replaceable> ]
            [ ENCODING [=] <replaceable class="parameter">encoding</replaceable> ]
+           [ STRATEGY [=] <replaceable class="parameter">strategy</replaceable> ] ]
            [ LOCALE [=] <replaceable class="parameter">locale</replaceable> ]
            [ LC_COLLATE [=] <replaceable class="parameter">lc_collate</replaceable> ]
            [ LC_CTYPE [=] <replaceable class="parameter">lc_ctype</replaceable> ]
@@ -118,6 +119,27 @@ CREATE DATABASE <replaceable class="parameter">name</replaceable>
        </para>
       </listitem>
      </varlistentry>
+     <varlistentry id="create-database-strategy" xreflabel="CREATE DATABASE STRATEGY">
+      <term><replaceable class="parameter">strategy</replaceable></term>
+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Strategy to be used in creating the new database.  If
+        the <literal>WAL_LOG</literal> strategy is used, the database will be
+        copied block by block and each block will be separately written
+        to the write-ahead log. This is the most efficient strategy in
+        cases where the template database is small, and therefore it is the
+        default. The older <literal>FILE_COPY</literal> strategy is also
+        available. This strategy writes a small record to the write-ahead log
+        for each tablespace used by the target database. Each such record
+        represents copying an entire directory to a new location at the
+        filesystem level. While this does reduce the write-ahed
+        log volume substantially, especially if the template database is large,
+        it also forces the system to perform a checkpoint both before and
+        after the creation of the new database. In some situations, this may
+        have a noticeable negative impact on overall system performance.
+       </para>
+      </listitem>
+     </varlistentry>
      <varlistentry>
       <term><replaceable class="parameter">locale</replaceable></term>
       <listitem>
diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/ref/createdb.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/ref/createdb.sgml
index be42e502d69..671cd362d94 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/ref/createdb.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/ref/createdb.sgml
@@ -178,6 +178,17 @@ PostgreSQL documentation
      </varlistentry>
 
      <varlistentry>
+      <term><option>-S <replaceable class="parameter">template</replaceable></option></term>
+      <term><option>--strategy=<replaceable class="parameter">strategy</replaceable></option></term>
+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Specifies the database creation strategy.  See
+        <xref linkend="create-database-strategy" /> for more details.
+       </para>
+      </listitem>
+     </varlistentry>
+
+     <varlistentry>
       <term><option>-T <replaceable class="parameter">template</replaceable></option></term>
       <term><option>--template=<replaceable class="parameter">template</replaceable></option></term>
       <listitem>