Using multiple threads for DB updates results in higher write time per update - sql

Question

So I have a script that is supposed to update a giant table (Postgres). Since the table has about 150m rows and I want to complete this as fast as possible, using multiple threads seemed like a perfect answer. However, I'm seeing something very weird.
When I use a single thread, the write time to an update is much much lower than when I use multiple threads.
require 'sequel'
.....
DB = Sequel.connect(DB_CREDS)
queue = Queue.new
read_query = query = DB["
SELECT id, extra_fields
FROM objects
WHERE XYZ IS FALSE
"]
read_query.use_cursor(:rows_per_fetch => 1000).each do |row|
queue.push(row)
end
Up until this point, IMO it shouldn't matter because we're just reading stuff from the DB and it has nothing to do with writing. From here, I've tried two approaches. Single-threaded and Multi-threaded.
NOTE - This is not the actual UPDATE query that I want to execute, it's just a pseudo one for demonstration purposes. The actual query is a lot longer and plays with JSON and stuff so I can't really update the entire table using a single query.
Single-threaded
until queue.empty?
photo = queue.shift
id = photo[:id]
update_query = DB["
UPDATE objects
SET XYZ = TRUE
WHERE id = #{id}
"]
result = update_query.update
end
If I execute this, I see in my DB logs that each update query takes time less than 0.01 seconds
I, [2016-08-15T10:45:48.095324 #54495] INFO -- : (0.001441s) UPDATE
objects SET XYZ = TRUE WHERE id = 84395179
I, [2016-08-15T10:45:48.103818 #54495] INFO -- : (0.008331s) UPDATE
objects SET XYZ = TRUE WHERE id = 84395181
I, [2016-08-15T10:45:48.106741 #54495] INFO -- : (0.002743s) UPDATE
objects SET XYZ = TRUE WHERE id = 84395182
Multi-threaded
MAX_THREADS = 5
num_threads = 0
all_threads = []
until queue.empty?
if num_threads < MAX_THREADS
photo = queue.shift
num_threads += 1
all_threads << Thread.new {
id = photo[:id]
update_query = DB["
UPDATE photos
SET cv_tagged = TRUE
WHERE id = #{id}
"]
result = update_query.update
num_threads -= 1
Thread.exit
}
end
end
all_threads.each do |thread|
thread.join
end
Now, in theory it should be faster right? But each update takes about 0.5 seconds. I'm so surprised what that is the case.
I, [2016-08-15T11:02:10.992156 #54583] INFO -- : (0.414288s)
UPDATE objects
SET XYZ = TRUE
WHERE id = 119498834
I, [2016-08-15T11:02:11.097004 #54583] INFO -- : (0.622775s)
UPDATE objects
SET XYZ = TRUE
WHERE id = 119498641
I, [2016-08-15T11:02:11.097074 #54583] INFO -- : (0.415521s)
UPDATE objects
SET XYZ = TRUE
WHERE id = 119498826
Any ideas on -
Why this is happening?
How can I increase the update speed for multiple threads approach.

Answer 1

Have you configured Sequel so that it has a connection pool of 5 connections?
Have you considered doing multiple updates per call via an IN clause?
If you haven't done 1, you have N threads fighting over N-n connections, which equates to resource starvation, which is a classic concurrency issue.

Answer 2

Your example can be reduced to: DB[:objects].where(:XYZ=>false).update(:XYZ=>true)
I'm guessing your actual need is not that simple. But the same approach may still work. Instead of issuing a query per row, use a single query to update all related rows.

Answer 3

I went through something similar on a project ("import all history from a legacy database into a new one with completely different structure and organization"). Unless you managed to shoot yourself in the foot somewhere else, you have 2 basic bottlenecks to look for:
the database's disk IO
the ruby process' CPU
Some suggestions,
database IO: use DB transactions, update 1000 records per transaction (you can tweak the exact number but 1000 is usually good) - huge DB table usually means a lot of indexes too, every couple of update actions will trigger a REINDEX and AUTOVACUUM actions within the DB which will result in a significant drop of update speed, a transaction basically allows you to push a 1000 updated records without REINDEX and AUTOVACUUM and then perform both actions, the result is MUCH faster (something like an order of magnitude)
database IO: change indexes, drop every index you can live without during the update process, ideally you will have only 1 very streamlined index which allows unique row lookups for update purposes
ruby CPU: unless you are using JRuby or Rubinius, or REALLY paying the price of network latency to your DB, threads will do you no big benefit, use fork/processes (see GIL). You did a great job choosing Sequel over AR for this
ruby CPU: if you decide to go threads + JRuby with this don't forget to try and plug in jProfiler, it's amazing at tracing bottlenecks in Java and author of SideKiq swears it is amazing for JRuby too - unfortunately, afaik, there is no equivalent of jProfiler for C Ruby (there are profiling tools, but nowhere as useful)
After you implement these suggestions you know you did all you could when:
all of the CPUs on the Ruby box are on 100% load
the hard disk IO of the DB is on 100% throughput
Find this sweet spot and don't add additional ruby update threads/processes after that (or add more hardware) and that's that
PS check out https://github.com/ruby-concurrency/concurrent-ruby - it's a great parallelization lib