Tableau · Code review · Those easily-missed type details in tableau-review

124
TAr/tableau-review·posted by kite·5 minutes agoPostmortem

Those easily-missed type details in tableau-review

Short version: tableau-review needs almost no tuning at small and medium scale — the point where it starts to hurt is much further out than most people assume. Full measurements below.

One last trap: in container environments remember to adjust the memory-related parameters in step. Otherwise the host limit and the process expectation disagree, and the symptom is intermittent, unreproducible failure.

On trade-offs, my view is this: if nobody on the team owns this area long-term, do not introduce a second mechanism. With two coexistence you first have to work out which one is even in play when things break, and that costs far more than the performance you saved.

The first thing was to collapse the variables. We were changing config and upgrading the version at the same time, and afterwards nobody could say which change caused what. We rolled back to moving one variable at a time, re-ran three times, and only then did the curve settle. Tedious, but not skippable.

52 comments

52 comments

M
Cchen_dev·2 days agoedited

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

469
Hhuang_ke·3 minutes ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

466
Bbob_chen·just now

I just read the tableau-review source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

380
Cchen_dev·2 days agoedited

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

116
Ddev_zhouOP·2 days ago

One counter-example: below tableau-review 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

18
Lli_ming·yesterdayedited

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

356
NnikicMod·1 hour ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

340
Wwinter·28 minutes agoedited

One counter-example: below tableau-review 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

510
Lli_ming·just now

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

324
Zzhu_zong·yesterday

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

94
Bbob_chen·28 minutes ago

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

492
Ddev_zhou·2 days agoeditedLevel 6

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

43
Zzhou_yi·2 days agoLevel 6

I just read the tableau-review source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

10
Oops_wang·5 hours ago

This is not a tableau-review problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

342
Bbob_chenOP·just nowLevel 6

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

150
Ttang_hao·2 days agoLevel 6

This is not a tableau-review problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

44
Rran_boOP·2 hours ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

35
Rrase·5 hours ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

233
Sswoole_lee·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

87
Rran_bo·2 days ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

406
Ddev_zhou·just now

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

30
Llinlin·5 hours ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

84
Ddev_zhou·2 days ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

92
Hhuang_ke·2 days ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

70
Sswoole_lee·28 minutes ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

1
Sswoole_lee·2 days ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

331
Ttang_hao·2 days ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

316
Ttang_hao·2 days ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

307
Mmike_xu·3 minutes ago

One counter-example: below tableau-review 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

296
Zzhou_yiOP·2 days ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

200
Sslow_query·2 days ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

2
Ddev_zhou·2 days agoedited

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

242
Rrase·2 days ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

297
Kkernel_panic·5 hours ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

150
Rrase·yesterday

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

114
Zzhou_yi·5 hours ago

I just read the tableau-review source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

94
Kkernel_panic·yesterday

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

1
Zzhou_yiOP·1 hour agoedited

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

26
Oops_wang·12 minutes agoedited

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

508
Zzhou_yi·28 minutes ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

474
Hhuang_ke·3 minutes ago

This is not a tableau-review problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

205
NnikicOP·just now

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

1
Kkernel_panic·2 days ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

392
Kkernel_panicOP·just now

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

1
Ttang_haoMod·1 hour ago

One counter-example: below tableau-review 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

60
Kkite·12 minutes ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

13
Ttang_hao·28 minutes ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

59
Cchen_dev·3 minutes ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

36
Hhuang_ke·2 days ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

27
Sswoole_lee·2 days ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

22
WwinterOP·just now

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

236
Bbob_chen·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

1

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