The Alternator CreateTable operation currently performs several schema-
changing operations separately - one by one: It creates a keyspace,
a table in that keyspace and possibly also multiple views, and it sets
tags on the table. A consequence of this is that concurrent CreateTable
and DeleteTable operations (for example) can result in unexpected errors
or inconsistent states - for example CreateTable wants to create the
table in the keyspace it just created, but a concurrent DeleteTable
deleted it. We have two issues about this problem (#6391 and #9868)
and three tests (test_table.py::test_concurrent_create_and_delete_table)
reproducing it.
In this patch we fix these problems by switching to the modern Scylla
schema-changing API: Instead of doing several schema-changing
operations one by one, we create a vector of schema mutation performing
all these operations - and then perform all these mutations together.
When the experimental Raft-based schema modifications is enabled, this
completely solves the races, and the tests begin to pass. However, if
the experimental Raft mode is not enabled, these tests continue to fail
because there is still no locking while applying the different schema
mutations (not even on a single node). So I put a special fixture
"fails_without_raft" on these tests - which means that the tests
xfail if run without raft, and expected to pass when run on Raft.
Indeed, after this patch
test/alternator/run --raft test_table.py::test_concurrent_create_and_delete_table
shows three passing tests (they also pass if we drastically improve the
number of iterations), while
test/alternator/run test_table.py::test_concurrent_create_and_delete_table
shows three xfailing tests.
All other Alternator tests pass as before with this patch, verifying
that the handling of new tables, new views, tags, and CDC log tables,
all happen correctly even after this patch.
A note about the implementation: Before this patch, the CreateTable code
used high-level functions like prepare_new_column_family_announcement().
These high-level functions become unusable if we write multiple schema
operations to one list of mutations, because for example this function
validates that the keyspace had already been created - when it hasn't
and that's the whole point. So instead we had to use lower-level
function like add_table_or_view_to_schema_mutation() and
before_create_column_family(). However, despite being lower level,
these functions were public so I think it's reasonable to use them,
and we probably have no other alternative.
Fixes#6391Fixes#9868
Signed-off-by: Nadav Har'El <nyh@scylladb.com>
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