pg_proctab is a collection of PostgreSQL stored functions that provide access to the operating system process table using SQL. We'll show you which functions are available and where they collect the data, and give examples of their use to collect processor and I/O statistics on SQL queries.

1. pg proctab
Accessing System Stats in PostgreSQL
Mark Wong
markwkm@postgresql.org
PostgreSQL Conference East 2010
March 25-28, 2010

2. Slides available on slideshare
http://www.slideshare.net/markwkm

3. Agenda
Brief review of what PostgreSQL stats are available
How pg proctab may help

4. Review
Some of the PostgreSQL system catalog tables:
pg stat activity
pg stat database
pg stat all tables
pg stat all indexes
pg statio all tables
pg statio all indexes

5. Example: pg stat activity
SELECT datname, procpid, usename, current_query
FROM pg_stat_activity
WHERE current_query <> ’<IDLE>’;
datname dbt5
procpid 3260
usename postgres
current_query SELECT * FROM TradeLookupFrame3(
’2006-2-27 9:15:0’,43000050000,20,
’2005-11-23 12:6:8’,’ENGAPRB’)
...

6. Example: pg stat database
SELECT datname, numbackends, xact_commit, xact_rollback
FROM pg_stat_database
ORDER BY datname;
datname dbt5
numbackends 11
xact_commit 228458
xact_rollback 320

7. Example: pg stat all tables
SELECT seq_scan, idx_scan, n_tup_ins, n_tup_upd,
n_tup_del
FROM pg_stat_all_tables
WHERE relname = ’customer’;
seq_scan 10
idx_scan 152795
n_tup_ins 5000
n_tup_upd 0
n_tup_del 0

8. Example: pg statio all tables
SELECT heap_blks_read, heap_blks_hit, idx_blks_read,
idx_blks_hit
FROM pg_statio_all_tables
WHERE relname = ’customer’;
heap_blks_read 26897
heap_blks_hit 141581
idx_blks_read 5577
idx_blks_hit 328770

9. __ __
/ ~~~/ . o O ( Want more! )
,----( oo )
/ __ __/
/| ( |(
^ /___ / |
|__| |__|-"

10. What about operating system statistics?
I/O? — iostat
Processor Utilization? — mpstat
Per Process Statistics? — pidstat
Other system activity? — sar
and so on...

11. Introducing pg proctab
pg proctab is a collection of four C stored functions:
pg cputime
pg loadavg
pg memusage
pg proctab

12. __ __
/ ~~~/ . o O ( Examples? )
,----( oo )
/ __ __/
/| ( |(
^ /___ / |
|__| |__|-"

13. Some of the things pg proctab should help with
Query operating system process table
Query operating system statistics
Processor time
Load averages
Memory usage
Without escaping out to a shell!
...plus generate reports about timeslices
Note: Following examples are from Linux based systems.

14. pg cputime() Example
SELECT *
FROM pg_cputime();
user 31529387
nice 76
system 6865679
idle 574707718
iowait 1985455

15. pg cputime() Column Description
From Linux kernel source code at
Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt:
user: normal processes executing in user mode
nice: niced processes executing in user mode
system: processes executing in kernel mode
idle: processes twiddling thumbs
iowait: waiting for I/O to complete

16. pg loadavg() Example
SELECT *
FROM pg_loadavg();
load1 7.71
load5 7.73
load15 7.62
last_pid 4623

17. pg loadavg() Column Description
load1: load average of last minute
load5: load average of last 5 minutes
load15: load average of last 15 minutes
last pid: last pid running

18. pg memusage() Example
SELECT *
FROM pg_memusage();
memused 32793836
memfree 157704
memshared 0
membuffers 94216
memcached 31749292
swapused 13960
swapfree 3986216
swapcached 1264

19. pg memusage() Column Description
Paraphrased from Linux kernel source code at
Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt:
memused: Total physical RAM used
memfree: Total physical RAM not used
memshared: Not used, always 0. (For Solaris.)
membuffers: Temporary storage for raw disk blocks
memcached: In-memory cache for files read from disk
swapused: Total swap space used
swapfree: Memory evicted from RAM that is now temporary on
disk
swapcached: Memory that was swapped out, now swapped in but
still in swap

20. pg proctab() Partial Column Description
Everything from the operating system such as /proc/<pid>/stat,
/proc/<pid>/io and /proc/<pid>/cmdline as well as data
from PostgreSQL system catalog such as pg stat activity table
are available but we’ll only cover some of the fields here:
Informative:
pid
comm - filename of the executable
fullcomm (/proc/<pid>/cmdline)
uid
username
Processor:
utime - user mode jiffies
stime - kernel mode jiffies
...

21. pg proctab() Partial Column Description (cont.)
Memory:
vsize - virtual memory size
rss - resident set memory size
I/O:
syscr - number of read I/O operations
syscw - number of write I/O operations
reads - number of bytes which this process really did cause to
be fetched from the storage layer
writes - number of bytes which this process really did cause to
be sent from the storage layer
cwrites - number of bytes which this process caused to not
happen, by truncating pagecache

22. __ __
/ ~~~/ . o O ( More useful examples? )
,----( oo )
/ __ __/
/| ( |(
^ /___ / |
|__| |__|-"

23. pg proctab() Example
SELECT datname, procpid, processor, state, fullcomm
FROM pg_stat_activity, pg_proctab()
WHERE procpid = pid;
datname dbt5
procpid 3260
processor 6
state R
fullcomm postgres: postgres dbt5 207.173.203.228(48950)
SELECT
datname dbt5
procpid 3261
processor 1
state R
fullcomm postgres: postgres dbt5 207.173.203.228(48953)
SELECT

24. __ __ /
/ ~~~/ . o O | Measuring performance |
,----( oo ) | of a query. |
/ __ __/ /
/| ( |(
^ /___ / |
|__| |__|-"
You can find the following helper scripts in the pg proctab
contrib directory.

25. Create snapshot tables
Create a set of tables to hold all of the information returned by
these 4 stored functions. Also creates a table to timestamp when a
snapshot of data is taken.
psql -f create-ps_procstat-tables.sql

26. Identify yourself.
dbt3=# SELECT *
FROM pg_backend_pid();
pg_backend_pid
----------------
4590
(1 row)

27. Take a snapshot before running the query
dbt3=# i ps_procstat-snap.sql
BEGIN
ps_snap_stats
---------------
1
(1 row)
COMMIT

28. Execute an SQL statement
Don’t focus too much on the actual query, the idea is that is you
want to collect statistics for a single query:
SELECT nation,
o_year,
Sum(amount) AS sum_profit
FROM (SELECT n_name AS nation,
Extract(YEAR FROM o_orderdate) AS o_year,
l_extendedprice * (1 - l_discount) - ps_supplycost * l_quantity AS amount
FROM part,
supplier,
lineitem,
partsupp,
orders,
nation
WHERE s_suppkey = l_suppkey
AND ps_suppkey = l_suppkey
AND ps_partkey = l_partkey
AND p_partkey = l_partkey
AND o_orderkey = l_orderkey
AND s_nationkey = n_nationkey
AND p_name LIKE ’%white%’) AS profit
GROUP BY nation,
o_year
ORDER BY nation,
o_year DESC;

29. Take a snapshot after running the query
dbt3=# i ps_procstat-snap.sql
BEGIN
ps_snap_stats
---------------
2
(1 row)
COMMIT

30. Calculate Processor Utilization
$ ./ps-processor-utilization.sh [pid] [before] [after]
$ ./ps-processor-utilization.sh 4590 1 2
Processor Utilization = 1.00 %
What the script does (partially) should be the same as top:
SELECT stime, utime, stime + utime AS total,
extract(epoch FROM time)
FROM ps_snaps a, ps_procstat b
WHERE pid = ${PID}
AND a.snap = b.snap
AND a.snap = ${SNAP1}

31. Calculate Disk Utilization
$ ./ps-io-utilization.sh 4590 1 2
Reads = 276981
Writes = 63803
Reads (Bytes) = 2164604928
Writes (Bytes) = 508166144
Cancelled (Bytes) = 36880384
SELECT syscr, syscw, reads, writes, cwrites
FROM ps_snaps a, ps_procstat b
WHERE pid = ${PID}
AND a.snap = b.snap
AND a.snap = ${SNAP1}

32. __ __ /
/ ~~~/ . o O | Creating Custom |
,----( oo ) | Reports! |
/ __ __/ /
/| ( |(
^ /___ / |
|__| |__|-"
ps-report-pl

33. __ __ /
/ ~~~/ . o O | Warning! Too much data |
,----( oo ) | to fit on screen! |
/ __ __/ /
/| ( |(
^ /___ / |
|__| |__|-"

34. Creating Reports: Section 1
Database : dbt5
Snapshot Start : 2010-03-26 15:24:51.516226-07
Snapshot End : 2010-03-26 15:25:51.57661-07
-------------------
Database Statistics
-------------------
Commits : 421
Rollbacks : 2
Blocks Read : 13919368
Blocks Hit : 7876506

35. Creating Reports: Section 2
================
Table Statistics
================
------------------------------------------ -------- ------------ -------- ------------- --------- --------
Schema.Relation Seq Scan Seq Tup Read Idx Scan Idx Tup Fetch N Tup Ins N Tup Up
------------------------------------------ -------- ------------ -------- ------------- --------- --------
...
public.account_permission 0 0 3 3 0
public.address 0 0 488 732 0
public.broker 169 8067 259 259 0 3
public.cash_transaction 0 0 952 928 37 7
public.charge 39 585 0 0 0
public.commission_rate 60 9820 18 44 0
public.company 2 5000 1496 1496 0
public.company_competitor 0 0 61 183 0
public.customer 0 0 375 375 0
public.customer_account 0 0 690 968 0 3
public.customer_taxrate 20 200000 40 40 0
public.daily_market 0 0 4322 4962 0
...

36. Creating Reports: Section 2 - Falling off the right side...
N Tup Upd
N Tup Del
Last Vacuum
Last Autovacuum
Last Analyze
Last Autoanalyze

37. Creating Reports: Section 3
================
Index Statistics
================
--------------------------------------------------------------------- -------- ------------ -------------
Schema.Relation.Index Idx Scan Idx Tup Read Idx Tup Fetch
--------------------------------------------------------------------- -------- ------------ -------------
...
public.account_permission.pk_account_permission 3 3 3
public.address.pk_address 488 732 732
public.broker.pk_broker 259 259 259
public.cash_transaction.pk_cash_transaction 952 998 928
public.charge.pk_charge 0 0 0
public.commission_rate.pk_commission_rate 18 44 0
public.company.i_co_name 14 14 14
public.company.pk_company 1482 1482 1482
public.company_competitor.pk_company_competitor 61 183 183
public.customer.i_c_tax_id 27 27 27
public.customer.pk_customer 348 348 348
public.customer_account.i_ca_c_id 198 477 476
...

38. What else can we do with pg proctab?
Enable pg top to monitor remote databases by providing access to
the database system’s operating system process table.

39. pg top

40. __ __
/ ~~~/ . o O ( Thank you! )
,----( oo )
/ __ __/
/| ( |(
^ /___ / |
|__| |__|-"

41. . . . the fine print . . .
Links:
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=pg_proctab.git
git clone
git://git.postgresql.org/git/pg proctab.git

42. Acknowledgements
Haley Jane Wakenshaw
__ __
/ ~~~/
,----( oo )
/ __ __/
/| ( |(
^ /___ / |
|__| |__|-"

43. License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
Unported License. To view a copy of this license, (a) visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/; or, (b)
send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 2nd Street, Suite 300, San
Francisco, California, 94105, USA.