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From: Subramanian,Ramachandran <ramachandran.subramanian@alte-leipziger.de>
To: David G. Johnston <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>
Cc: pgsql-novice@lists.postgresql.org <pgsql-novice@lists.postgresql.org>
Subject: AW: Trying to understand Tuple Header
Date: Mon, 4 May 2026 04:04:30 +0000
Message-ID: <544e6b78efba44e5b004a12a8460aa12@alte-leipziger.de> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAKFQuwbRKbjk4JPefgT6s64hN-i47a1nZO6O4j-+h48er6uyvw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <0f8e5544ae8a412bb637fcc3d15f8aaa@alte-leipziger.de>
	<CAKFQuwawOYYR=Dfa3tWsKOd-baJ-hV7SKMj9FHiMnd9f-=vNAg@mail.gmail.com>
	<b2202bde6eb145bb814806b5606d131a@alte-leipziger.de>
	<CAKFQuwbRKbjk4JPefgT6s64hN-i47a1nZO6O4j-+h48er6uyvw@mail.gmail.com>

Wow!!!  Thank you.  You are correct. T_infomask did change.

I began with postgres in Nov 2025 and I am having so much fun learning it. I am deeply grateful for this community.


So the next select to the table cross references the pg_xact file to check if hint bits need to be updated or not ?  How deep does the next select look into the pg_xact file ? For example if I roll back and never touch this table for 30  Minutes and I come back and do a second select…will it look back into 30 mins of history in pg_xact ?


It is a wonderful morning to have learned a little bit of PG Magic 😊 .  Thank you all.





SELECT t_ctid,t_infomask, cast(t_infomask as bit(16))  FROM heap_page_items(get_raw_page('One_Page_Wonder',0));
t_ctid | t_infomask |    t_infomask
--------+------------+------------------
(0,1)  |       2050 | 0000100000000010
(0,2)  |       2050 | 0000100000000010
(2 rows)

SELECT * FROM One_Page_Wonder ;
id |        text        |         time_stamp
----+--------------------+----------------------------
  1 | First row Inserted | 2026-05-04 05:50:32.540905
(1 row)

SELECT t_ctid,t_infomask, cast(t_infomask as bit(16))  FROM heap_page_items(get_raw_page('One_Page_Wonder',0));
t_ctid | t_infomask |    t_infomask
--------+------------+------------------
(0,1)  |       2306 | 0000100100000010
(0,2)  |       2562 | 0000101000000010
(2 rows)



Freundliche Grüße

i. A. Ramachandran Subramanian
Zentralbereich Informationstechnologie

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Von: David G. Johnston <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>
Gesendet: Sonntag, 3. Mai 2026 21:49
An: Subramanian,Ramachandran IT-md-db <ramachandran.subramanian@alte-leipziger.de>
Cc: pgsql-novice@lists.postgresql.org
Betreff: Re: Trying to understand Tuple Header

On Sun, May 3, 2026 at 12:25 PM Subramanian,Ramachandran <ramachandran.subramanian@alte-leipziger.de<mailto:ramachandran.subramanian@alte-leipziger.de>> wrote:
The binary value of t_infomask for both the tuples are identical, but they produce different column values for xmin_commited, xmin_aborted ….  in the SQL  !!!.

Am I not seeing something that is obvious?

You didn't re-check the infomask data after running the select query, instead assuming the bits didn't change.  They did.  SELECT is not a read-only operation, it participates in optimizations.  Called "writing hint bits".  Manually evaluating the various tests against the data you did show would have proven that the pre-select-data had zeros where the second query claims there are ones.

David J.



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