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@sidkhillon sidkhillon commented Feb 11, 2026

When the WAL tailing reader hits EOF mid-cell during WAL compression, it currently returns EOF_AND_RESET_COMPRESSION, which forces the reader to re-read the entire WAL file from the beginning to rebuild dictionary state. This is an O(n) operation that becomes increasingly expensive as the WAL grows.

The root cause is that the CompressedKvDecoder eagerly adds entries to the compression dictionaries (ROW, FAMILY, QUALIFIER, and tag dictionaries) as it reads each field of a cell. If an IOException occurs partway through reading a cell, the dictionaries are left in a partially-updated state that no longer matches the actual stream position. The reader has no choice but to throw away the entire compression context and start over.

Proposed Fix is to defer dictionary additions until a cell is fully parsed:

  • Buffer ROW/FAMILY/QUALIFIER dictionary additions in CompressedKvDecoder and only commit them after parseCellInner() succeeds. On IOException, discard the pending additions.
  • Add a similar deferred-addition mode to TagCompressionContext for tag dictionaries.
  • Reset the ValueCompressor if an IOException occurs during the value decompression phase.

With deferred additions, hitting EOF mid-cell leaves the dictionaries in the state they were after the last fully-read cell. This means the reader can return EOF_AND_RESET (a cheap seek to the saved position) instead of EOF_AND_RESET_COMPRESSION, and resume reading from where it left off once the file grows.

@sidkhillon sidkhillon changed the title [HBASE-29890] WAL tailing reader should resume partial cell reads instead of resetting compression HBASE-29890 WAL tailing reader should resume partial cell reads instead of resetting compression Feb 11, 2026
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cc @Apache9, I would really appreciate any feedback you have on this PR. Thank you!

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