Waiting for PostgreSQL 13 – Add leader_pid to pg_stat_activity

On 6th of February 2020, Michael Paquier committed patch:

Add leader_pid to pg_stat_activity
 
This new field tracks the PID of the group leader used with parallel
query.  For parallel workers and the leader, the value is set to the
PID of the group leader.  So, for the group leader, the value is the
same as its own PID.  Note that this reflects what PGPROC stores in
shared memory, so as leader_pid is NULL if a backend has never been
involved in parallel query.  If the backend is using parallel query or
has used it at least once, the value is set until the backend exits.
 
Author: Julien Rouhaud
Reviewed-by: Sergei Kornilov, Guillaume Lelarge, Michael Paquier, Tomas
Vondra
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAOBaU_Yy5bt0vTPZ2_LUM6cUcGeqmYNoJ8-Rgto+c2+w3defYA@mail.gmail.com

This is pretty cool. We have, for quite some time now, parallel queries. Now we're getting more visibility to them.

If I'd run a query that runs parallel workers, like

=$ EXPLAIN analyze SELECT COUNT(*) FROM test;

on large table, I see, in pg_stat_activity:

=$ SELECT pid, leader_pid, query FROM pg_stat_activity
  pid  │ leader_pid │                        query
───────┼────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 19316[NULL]SELECT pid, leader_pid, query FROM pg_stat_activity 
 1996419964EXPLAIN analyze SELECT COUNT(*) FROM test;
 2336419964EXPLAIN analyze SELECT COUNT(*) FROM test;
 2336519964EXPLAIN analyze SELECT COUNT(*) FROM test;
...

This is great. Thanks to all involved.