Re: Postgresql and multithreading

Anuradha Ratnaweera wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 16, 2002 at 01:25:23AM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > Anuradha Ratnaweera wrote:
> >
> > > ... what I want to know is whether multithreading is likely to get
> > > into in postgresql, say somewhere in 8.x, or even in 9.x?
> >
> > It may be optional some day, most likely for Win32 at first, but we see
> > little value to it on most other platforms; of course, we may be wrong.
>
> In that case, I wonder if it is worth folking a new project to add
> threading support to the backend? Of course, keeping in sync with the
> original would be lot of work.

Probably not, but you can try.

> In that way, one should be able to test the hypothesis (whether threads
> improve things, or the other way round - if one likes it it that way :))
> without messing around with stable postgres code, as they did and do
> with postgresql-R.

I guess.

> And a minor question is wheter it is legal to keep the _changes_ in such
> a project GPL?

We don't think we change the license, and we are happy with BSD. It
certainly will never be merged in with a GPL, I can say that for sure.

> > I am also not sure if it is a big win on Apache either; I think the
> > jury is still out on that one, hence the slow adoption of 2.X,
>
> As far as we are concened, it is the stability, rather than speed which
> still keeps us in 1.3.

You could easily lose stability with threads -- don't think they are a
free ride --- they aren't, and no, I don't feel like regurgitating what
is already a 'thread' link on the TODO list.

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