Warning

Multi-node support is deprecated.

TimescaleDB v2.13 is the last version that includes multi-node support. It supports multi-node installations with PostgreSQL versions 13, 14, and 15. For more information, see Multi-node Deprecation.

This procedure is used on an access node to execute a SQL command across the data nodes of a distributed database. For instance, one use case is to create the roles and permissions needed in a distributed database.

The procedure can run distributed commands transactionally, so a command is executed either everywhere or nowhere. However, not all SQL commands can run in a transaction. This can be toggled with the argument transactional. Note if the execution is not transactional, a failure on one of the data node requires manual dealing with any introduced inconsistency.

Note that the command is not executed on the access node itself and it is not possible to chain multiple commands together in one call.

Important

You cannot run distributed_exec with some SQL commands. For example, ALTER EXTENSION doesn't work because it can't be called after the TimescaleDB extension is already loaded.

Create the role testrole across all data nodes in a distributed database:

CALL distributed_exec($$ CREATE USER testrole WITH LOGIN $$);

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Create the role testrole on two specific data nodes:

CALL distributed_exec($$ CREATE USER testrole WITH LOGIN $$, node_list => '{ "dn1", "dn2" }');

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Create the table example on all data nodes:

CALL distributed_exec($$ CREATE TABLE example (ts TIMESTAMPTZ, value INTEGER) $$);

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Create new databases dist_database on data nodes, which requires setting transactional to FALSE:

CALL distributed_exec('CREATE DATABASE dist_database', transactional => FALSE);

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