• Querying namespaces
  • Root namespaces
  • Descendant namespaces
  • Ancestor namespaces
  • Hierarchies
  • Recursive queries
• Namespace query implementation
  • Superset

Namespaces

Namespaces are containers for projects and associated resources. A Namespace is instantiated through its subclasses of Group, ProjectNamespace, and UserNamespace.

A User has one UserNamespace, and can be a member of many Namespaces.

Group exists in a recursive hierarchical relationship. Groups have many ProjectNamespaces which parent one Project.

Querying namespaces

There is a set of methods provided to query the namespace hierarchy. The methods produce standard Rails ActiveRecord::Relation objects. The methods can be split into two similar halves. One set of methods operate on a Namespace object, while the other set operate as composable Namespace scopes.

By their nature, the object methods will operate within a single Namespace hierarchy, while the scopes can span hierarchies.

The following is a non-exhaustive list of methods to query Namespace hierarchies.

Root namespaces

The root is the top most Namespace in the hierarchy. A root has a nil parent_id.

Namespace.where(...).roots

namespace_object.root_ancestor

Descendant namespaces

The descendants of a namespace are its children, their children, and so on.

We can return ourself and our descendants through self_and_descendants.

Namespace.where(...).self_and_descendants

namespace_object.self_and_descendants

We can return only our descendants excluding ourselves:

Namespace.where(...).self_and_descendants(include_self: false)

namespace_object.descendants

We could not name the scope method .descendants because we would override the Object method of the same name.

It can be more efficient to return the descendant IDs instead of the whole record:

Namespace.where(...).self_and_descendant_ids
Namespace.where(...).self_and_descendant_ids(include_self: false)

namespace_object.self_and_descendant_ids
namespace_object.descendant_ids

Ancestor namespaces

The ancestors of a namespace are its children, their children, and so on.

We can return ourself and our ancestors through self_and_ancestors.

Namespace.where(...).self_and_ancestors

namespace_object.self_and_ancestors

We can return only our ancestors excluding ourselves:

Namespace.where(...).self_and_ancestors(include_self: false)

namespace_object.ancestors

We could not name the scope method .ancestors because we would override the Module method of the same name.

It can be more efficient to return the ancestor ids instead of the whole record:

Namespace.where(...).self_and_ancstor_ids
Namespace.where(...).self_and_ancestor_ids(include_self: false)

namespace_object.self_and_ancestor_ids
namespace_object.ancestor_ids

Hierarchies

A Namespace hierarchy is a Namespace, its ancestors, and its descendants.

We can query a namespace hierarchy:

Namespace.where(...).self_and_hierarchy

namespace_object.self_and_hierarchy

Recursive queries

The queries above are known as the linear queries because they use the namespaces.traversal_ids column to perform standard SQL queries instead of recursive CTE queries.

A set of legacy recursive queries are also accessible if needed:

Namespace.where(...).recursive_self_and_descendants
Namespace.where(...).recursive_self_and_descendants(include_self: false)
Namespace.where(...).recursive_self_and_descendant_ids
Namespace.where(...).recursive_self_and_descendant_ids(include_self: false)
Namespace.where(...).recursive_self_and_ancestors
Namespace.where(...).recursive_self_and_ancestors(include_self: false)
Namespace.where(...).recursive_self_and_ancstor_ids
Namespace.where(...).recursive_self_and_ancestor_ids(include_self: false)
Namespace.where(...).recursive_self_and_hierarchy

namespace_object.recursive_root_ancestor
namespace_object.recursive_self_and_descendants
namespace_object.recursive_descendants
namespace_object.recursive_self_and_descendant_ids
namespace_object.recursive_descendant_ids
namespace_object.recursive_self_and_ancestors
namespace_object.recursive_ancestors
namespace_object.recursive_self_and_ancestor_ids
namespace_object.recursive_ancestor_ids
namespace_object.recursive_self_and_hierarchy

Namespace query implementation

The linear queries are executed using the namespaces.traversal_ids array column. Each array represents an ordered set of Namespace IDs from the root Namespace to the current Namespace.

Given the scenario:

The traversal_ids for Namespace A.A.B would be [A, A.A, A.A.B].

The traversal_ids have some useful properties to keep in mind if working in this area:

• The root of every Namespace is provided by traversal_ids[1]. Note that PostgreSQL array indexes begin at 1.
• The ID of the current Namespace is provided by traversal_ids[array_length(traversal_ids, 1)].
• The Namespace ancestors are represented by the traversal_ids.
• A Namespace’s traversal_ids are a subset of their descendants traversal_ids. A Namespace with traversal_ids = [1,2,3] will have descendants that all start with [1,2,3,...].
• PostgreSQL arrays are ordered such that [1] < [1,1] < [2].

Using these properties we find the root and ancestors are already provided for by traversal_ids.

With the object descendant queries we lean on the @> array operator which will test inclusion of an array inside another array. The @> operator has been found to be quite slow as the search space grows. Another method is used for scope queries which tend to have larger search spaces. With scope queries we combine comparison operators with the array ordering property.

All descendants of a Namespace with traversal_ids = [1,2,3] have traversal_ids that are greater than [1,2,3] but less than [1,2,4]. In this example [1,2,3] and [1,2,4] are siblings, and [1,2,4] is the next sibling after [1,2,3]. A SQL function is provided to find the next sibling of a traversal_ids called next_traversal_ids_sibling.

gitlabhq_development=# select next_traversal_ids_sibling(ARRAY[1,2,3]);
 next_traversal_ids_sibling
----------------------------
 {1,2,4}
(1 row)

We then build descendant linear query scopes using comparison operators:

WHERE namespaces.traversal_ids > ARRAY[1,2,3]
  AND namespaces.traversal_ids < next_traversal_ids_sibling(ARRAY[1,2,3])

Superset

Namespace queries are prone to returning duplicate results. For example, consider a query to find descendants of A and A.A:

namespaces = Namespace.where(name: ['A', 'A.A'])

namespaces.self_and_descendants

=> A.A, A.A.A, A.A.B, A.B, A.B.A, A.B.B

Searching for the descendants of both A and A.A is unnecessary because A.A is already a descendant of A. In extreme cases this can create excessive I/O leading to poor performance.

Redundant Namespaces are eliminated from a query if a Namespace ID in the traversal_ids attribute matches an ID belonging to another Namespace in the set of Namespaces being queried. A match of this condition signifies that an ancestor exists in the set of Namespaces being queried, and the current Namespace is therefore redundant. This optimization will result in much better performance of edge cases that would otherwise be very slow.