ESQL: Limit memory usage of fold (#118602)

`fold` can be surprisingly heavy! The maximally efficient/paranoid thing
would be to fold each expression one time, in the constant folding rule,
and then store the result as a `Literal`. But this PR doesn't do that
because it's a big change. Instead, it creates the infrastructure for
tracking memory usage for folding as plugs it into as many places as
possible. That's not perfect, but it's better.

This infrastructure limit the allocations of fold similar to the
`CircuitBreaker` infrastructure we use for values, but it's different
in a critical way: you don't manually free any of the values. This is
important because the plan itself isn't `Releasable`, which is required
when using a real CircuitBreaker. We could have tried to make the plan
releasable, but that'd be a huge change.

Right now there's a single limit of 5% of heap per query. We create the
limit at the start of query planning and use it throughout planning.

There are about 40 places that don't yet use it. We should get them
plugged in as quick as we can manage. After that, we should look to the
maximally efficient/paranoid thing that I mentioned about waiting for
constant folding. That's an even bigger change, one I'm not equipped
to make on my own.

Author: nik9000

benchmarks/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/benchmark/compute/operator/EvalBenchmark.java

@@ -27,6 +27,7 @@
 import org.elasticsearch.core.TimeValue;
 import org.elasticsearch.xpack.esql.core.expression.Expression;
 import org.elasticsearch.xpack.esql.core.expression.FieldAttribute;
+import org.elasticsearch.xpack.esql.core.expression.FoldContext;
 import org.elasticsearch.xpack.esql.core.expression.Literal;
 import org.elasticsearch.xpack.esql.core.expression.predicate.regex.RLikePattern;
 import org.elasticsearch.xpack.esql.core.tree.Source;
@@ -71,12 +72,11 @@ public class EvalBenchmark {
         BigArrays.NON_RECYCLING_INSTANCE
     );
 
+    private static final FoldContext FOLD_CONTEXT = FoldContext.small();
+
     private static final int BLOCK_LENGTH = 8 * 1024;
 
-    static final DriverContext driverContext = new DriverContext(
-        BigArrays.NON_RECYCLING_INSTANCE,
-        BlockFactory.getInstance(new NoopCircuitBreaker("noop"), BigArrays.NON_RECYCLING_INSTANCE)
-    );
+    static final DriverContext driverContext = new DriverContext(BigArrays.NON_RECYCLING_INSTANCE, blockFactory);
 
     static {
         // Smoke test all the expected values and force loading subclasses more like prod
@@ -114,18 +114,20 @@ private static EvalOperator.ExpressionEvaluator evaluator(String operation) {
         return switch (operation) {
             case "abs" -> {
                 FieldAttribute longField = longField();
-                yield EvalMapper.toEvaluator(new Abs(Source.EMPTY, longField), layout(longField)).get(driverContext);
+                yield EvalMapper.toEvaluator(FOLD_CONTEXT, new Abs(Source.EMPTY, longField), layout(longField)).get(driverContext);
             }
             case "add" -> {
                 FieldAttribute longField = longField();
                 yield EvalMapper.toEvaluator(
+                    FOLD_CONTEXT,
                     new Add(Source.EMPTY, longField, new Literal(Source.EMPTY, 1L, DataType.LONG)),
                     layout(longField)
                 ).get(driverContext);
             }
             case "add_double" -> {
                 FieldAttribute doubleField = doubleField();
                 yield EvalMapper.toEvaluator(
+                    FOLD_CONTEXT,
                     new Add(Source.EMPTY, doubleField, new Literal(Source.EMPTY, 1D, DataType.DOUBLE)),
                     layout(doubleField)
                 ).get(driverContext);
@@ -140,7 +142,8 @@ private static EvalOperator.ExpressionEvaluator evaluator(String operation) {
                     lhs = new Add(Source.EMPTY, lhs, new Literal(Source.EMPTY, 1L, DataType.LONG));
                     rhs = new Add(Source.EMPTY, rhs, new Literal(Source.EMPTY, 1L, DataType.LONG));
                 }
-                yield EvalMapper.toEvaluator(new Case(Source.EMPTY, condition, List.of(lhs, rhs)), layout(f1, f2)).get(driverContext);
+                yield EvalMapper.toEvaluator(FOLD_CONTEXT, new Case(Source.EMPTY, condition, List.of(lhs, rhs)), layout(f1, f2))
+                    .get(driverContext);
             }
             case "date_trunc" -> {
                 FieldAttribute timestamp = new FieldAttribute(
@@ -149,35 +152,37 @@ private static EvalOperator.ExpressionEvaluator evaluator(String operation) {
                     new EsField("timestamp", DataType.DATETIME, Map.of(), true)
                 );
                 yield EvalMapper.toEvaluator(
+                    FOLD_CONTEXT,
                     new DateTrunc(Source.EMPTY, new Literal(Source.EMPTY, Duration.ofHours(24), DataType.TIME_DURATION), timestamp),
                     layout(timestamp)
                 ).get(driverContext);
             }
             case "equal_to_const" -> {
                 FieldAttribute longField = longField();
                 yield EvalMapper.toEvaluator(
+                    FOLD_CONTEXT,
                     new Equals(Source.EMPTY, longField, new Literal(Source.EMPTY, 100_000L, DataType.LONG)),
                     layout(longField)
                 ).get(driverContext);
             }
             case "long_equal_to_long" -> {
                 FieldAttribute lhs = longField();
                 FieldAttribute rhs = longField();
-                yield EvalMapper.toEvaluator(new Equals(Source.EMPTY, lhs, rhs), layout(lhs, rhs)).get(driverContext);
+                yield EvalMapper.toEvaluator(FOLD_CONTEXT, new Equals(Source.EMPTY, lhs, rhs), layout(lhs, rhs)).get(driverContext);
             }
             case "long_equal_to_int" -> {
                 FieldAttribute lhs = longField();
                 FieldAttribute rhs = intField();
-                yield EvalMapper.toEvaluator(new Equals(Source.EMPTY, lhs, rhs), layout(lhs, rhs)).get(driverContext);
+                yield EvalMapper.toEvaluator(FOLD_CONTEXT, new Equals(Source.EMPTY, lhs, rhs), layout(lhs, rhs)).get(driverContext);
             }
             case "mv_min", "mv_min_ascending" -> {
                 FieldAttribute longField = longField();
-                yield EvalMapper.toEvaluator(new MvMin(Source.EMPTY, longField), layout(longField)).get(driverContext);
+                yield EvalMapper.toEvaluator(FOLD_CONTEXT, new MvMin(Source.EMPTY, longField), layout(longField)).get(driverContext);
             }
             case "rlike" -> {
                 FieldAttribute keywordField = keywordField();
                 RLike rlike = new RLike(Source.EMPTY, keywordField, new RLikePattern(".ar"));
-                yield EvalMapper.toEvaluator(rlike, layout(keywordField)).get(driverContext);
+                yield EvalMapper.toEvaluator(FOLD_CONTEXT, rlike, layout(keywordField)).get(driverContext);
             }
             default -> throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
         };

docs/changelog/118602.yaml

@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+pr: 118602
+summary: Limit memory usage of `fold`
+area: ES|QL
+type: bug
+issues: []

docs/reference/esql/functions/kibana/definition/bucket.json

@@ -1727,7 +1727,7 @@ public static <T extends Enum<T>> Setting<T> enumSetting(
      *
      * @param key the key for the setting
      * @param defaultValue the default value for this setting
-     * @param properties properties properties for this setting like scope, filtering...
+     * @param properties properties for this setting like scope, filtering...
      * @return the setting object
      */
     public static Setting<ByteSizeValue> memorySizeSetting(String key, ByteSizeValue defaultValue, Property... properties) {

docs/reference/esql/functions/kibana/definition/match_operator.json

@@ -194,6 +194,16 @@ private void assertCircuitBreaks(ThrowingRunnable r) throws IOException {
         );
     }
 
+    private void assertFoldCircuitBreaks(ThrowingRunnable r) throws IOException {
+        ResponseException e = expectThrows(ResponseException.class, r);
+        Map<?, ?> map = responseAsMap(e.getResponse());
+        logger.info("expected fold circuit breaking {}", map);
+        assertMap(
+            map,
+            matchesMap().entry("status", 400).entry("error", matchesMap().extraOk().entry("type", "fold_too_much_memory_exception"))
+        );
+    }
+
     private void assertParseFailure(ThrowingRunnable r) throws IOException {
         ResponseException e = expectThrows(ResponseException.class, r);
         Map<?, ?> map = responseAsMap(e.getResponse());
@@ -325,11 +335,23 @@ public void testManyConcatFromRow() throws IOException {
         assertManyStrings(resp, strings);
     }
 
+    /**
+     * Hits a circuit breaker by building many moderately long strings.
+     */
+    public void testHugeManyConcatFromRow() throws IOException {
+        assertFoldCircuitBreaks(
+            () -> manyConcat(
+                "ROW a=9999999999999, b=99999999999999999, c=99999999999999999, d=99999999999999999, e=99999999999999999",
+                5000
+            )
+        );
+    }
+
     /**
      * Fails to parse a huge huge query.
      */
     public void testHugeHugeManyConcatFromRow() throws IOException {
-        assertParseFailure(() -> manyConcat("ROW a=9999, b=9999, c=9999, d=9999, e=9999", 50000));
+        assertParseFailure(() -> manyConcat("ROW a=9999, b=9999, c=9999, d=9999, e=9999", 6000));
     }
 
     /**
@@ -387,13 +409,20 @@ public void testHugeManyRepeat() throws IOException {
      * Returns many moderately long strings.
      */
     public void testManyRepeatFromRow() throws IOException {
-        int strings = 10000;
+        int strings = 300;
         Response resp = manyRepeat("ROW a = 99", strings);
         assertManyStrings(resp, strings);
     }
 
     /**
-     * Fails to parse a huge huge query.
+     * Hits a circuit breaker by building many moderately long strings.
+     */
+    public void testHugeManyRepeatFromRow() throws IOException {
+        assertFoldCircuitBreaks(() -> manyRepeat("ROW a = 99", 400));
+    }
+
+    /**
+     * Fails to parse a huge, huge query.
      */
     public void testHugeHugeManyRepeatFromRow() throws IOException {
         assertParseFailure(() -> manyRepeat("ROW a = 99", 100000));

docs/reference/esql/functions/kibana/docs/match_operator.md

@@ -78,12 +78,20 @@ public Expression(Source source, List<Expression> children) {
         super(source, children);
     }
 
-    // whether the expression can be evaluated statically (folded) or not
+    /**
+     * Whether the expression can be evaluated statically, aka "folded", or not.
+     */
     public boolean foldable() {
         return false;
     }
 
-    public Object fold() {
+    /**
+     * Evaluate this expression statically to a constant. It is an error to call
+     * this if {@link #foldable} returns false.
+     */
+    public Object fold(FoldContext ctx) {
+        // TODO After removing FoldContext.unbounded from non-test code examine all calls
+        // for places we should use instanceof Literal instead
         throw new QlIllegalArgumentException("Should not fold expression");
     }
 

server/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/common/settings/Setting.java

@@ -107,10 +107,10 @@ public static boolean foldable(List<? extends Expression> exps) {
         return true;
     }
 
-    public static List<Object> fold(List<? extends Expression> exps) {
+    public static List<Object> fold(FoldContext ctx, List<? extends Expression> exps) {
         List<Object> folded = new ArrayList<>(exps.size());
         for (Expression exp : exps) {
-            folded.add(exp.fold());
+            folded.add(exp.fold(ctx));
         }
 
         return folded;
@@ -135,7 +135,7 @@ public static String name(Expression e) {
     /**
      * Is this {@linkplain Expression} <strong>guaranteed</strong> to have
      * only the {@code null} value. {@linkplain Expression}s that
-     * {@link Expression#fold()} to {@code null} <strong>may</strong>
+     * {@link Expression#fold} to {@code null} <strong>may</strong>
      * return {@code false} here, but should <strong>eventually</strong> be folded
      * into a {@link Literal} containing {@code null} which will return
      * {@code true} from here.