Pipeline Advancer
The open-source version of Ductwork runs a single thread per pipeline class for advancing pipelines. Ductwork Pro lets you scale this for high-throughput environments where pipeline advancement becomes a bottleneck.
Advancer bottlenecks are most common with:
- Large worker pools that churn through jobs quickly
- Pipelines with many fast steps (sub-second execution times)
- Burst traffic patterns that create sudden pipeline backlogs
Configure
Section titled “Configure”The pipeline_advancer.count configuration sets the number of threads.
Default: 1 (threads)
Global thread count
Section titled “Global thread count”default: &default pipeline_advancer: count: 5Per-pipeline thread counts
Section titled “Per-pipeline thread counts”For fine-grained control, specify counts by pipeline class:
default: &default pipeline_advancer: count: default: 7 MyPipelineA: 5 MyPipelineB: 2Pipelines without explicit configuration inherit the default value.
⚠️ Caution: Over-provisioning threads can increase database load and degrade performance. Start conservative and scale based on observed metrics.