[PHOENIX-6952] Do not disable normalizer on salted tables

• Type: Bug
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Blocker
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 5.2.0, 5.1.3
• Fix Version/s: 5.2.0, 5.1.4
• Component/s: core

Release Note

Phoenix will no longer disable the normalizer on newly created salted tables, and will allow enabling the normalizer on salted tables.

It is highly recommended to review all salted Phoenix tables, and manually set NORMALIZATION_ENABLED=true on them, to avoid regions growing uncontrollably.
It is not possible to determine whether NORMALIZATION_ENABLED=false was automatically set by Phoenix, or was manually set by some other reason, i.e. because
merging/splitting is handled manually, so care must be taken not to revert normalization where it was set explcitly by the user.

Also consider setting MERGE_ENABLED=false on salted Phoenix tables. While it is no longer necessary for correct operation, it may improve performance in some case.

• Assignee: Istvan Toth
• Reporter: Istvan Toth
• Created: 10/May/23 12:58
• Updated: 31/Jul/23 07:45
• Resolved: 31/Jul/23 07:32

Description

We have taken great lengths to disable the normalizer on salte tables to avoid PHOENIX-4096.

While disabling the normalizer helps with that, it also disables automatic splitting, which can lead to regions growing uncontrollably, and causing all kind of failures and data loss.

A better solution would be disabling merges on such tables instead. The normalizer does check that flag. It would also restrict manual merging, but that can be worked around by toggling the flag manually, and is a lesser problem than regions growin uncontrollably.

Alternatively, if we can fix PHOENIX-6910, then we can remove the normalizer restrictions.

Issue Links

• is caused by: PHOENIX-6586 Set NORMALIZATION_ENABLED to false on salted tables
• is caused by: PHOENIX-6616 Alter table command can be used to set normalization_enabled=true on salted tables
• relates to: PHOENIX-6910 Scans created during query compilation and execution against salted tables need to be more resilient
• links to: GitHub Pull Request #1647