Re: One long transaction or multiple short transactions?

-----Original Message-----
From: ktm(at)rice(dot)edu [mailto:ktm(at)rice(dot)edu]
Sent: October 8, 2015 1:00 PM
To: Carlo
Cc: pgsql-performance(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: [PERFORM] One long transaction or multiple short transactions?

On Thu, Oct 08, 2015 at 11:08:55AM -0400, Carlo wrote:
> >> Sounds like a locking problem
>
> This is what I am trying to get at. The reason that I am not
> addressing hardware or OS configuration concerns is that this is not
> my environment, but my client's. The client is running my import
> software and has a choice of how long the transactions can be. They
> are going for long transactions, and I am trying to determine whether
> there is a penalty for single long transactions over a configuration
> which would allow for more successive short transactions. (keep in mind
all reads and writes are single-row).
>
> There are other people working on hardware and OS configuration, and
> that's why I can't want to get into a general optimization discussion
> because the client is concerned with just this question.
>

On October 8, 2015 1:00 PM Ken wrote:
> Hi Carlo,

> Since the read/writes are basically independent, which is what I take your
"single-row" comment to mean, by batching them you are balancing two
> opposing factors. First, larger batches allow you to consolodate I/O and
other resource requests to make them more efficient per row. Second, larger
> batches require more locking as the number of rows updated grows. It may
very well be the case that by halving your batch size that the system can
> process them more quickly than a single batch that is twice the size.

Just to clarify, one transaction of this type may take longer to commit than
two successive transactions of half the size?