Some time ago, I wrote blogpost about how to pick a task from queue, without locking.
It was written in 2013, and as such it couldn't reflect everything we have now in PostgreSQL – namely SKIP LOCKED – which was added to PostgreSQL over year later.
Two people mentioned SKIP LOCKED in comments, but it was before it was committed even to git repo. But now, we have, officially released, PostgreSQL version with this mechanism, so let's see what it can do.
On 7th of October, Alvaro Herrera committed patch:
Implement SKIP LOCKED for row-level locks This clause changes the behavior of SELECT locking clauses in the presence of locked rows: instead of causing a process to block waiting for the locks held by other processes (or raise an error, with NOWAIT), SKIP LOCKED makes the new reader skip over such rows. While this is not appropriate behavior for general purposes, there are some cases in which it is useful, such as queue-like tables. Catalog version bumped because this patch changes the representation of stored rules. Reviewed by Craig Ringer (based on a previous attempt at an implementation by Simon Riggs, who also provided input on the syntax used in the current patch), David Rowley, and Álvaro Herrera. Author: Thomas Munro
Continue reading Waiting for 9.5 – Implement SKIP LOCKED for row-level locks