Re: Committing Resources to Win32

Joshua D. Drake wrote:

> Can we (the community) develop a Win32 native version using
> CreateProcess that will scale and perform at a level that
> is acceptable to wide general use. Understanding that for many
> operations PostgreSQL on Linux will perform as well if
> not faster than the other well known database with the letter O in
their
> name.

IMO, The answer is yes. Don't take my word for it though, download the
PeerDirect port and slam it a bit, and compare vs. a similar *nix
version running pg 7.2.1. (or, run the cygwin version). In my
experience, the cygwin version runs just fine performance wise, the only
problem is the ipc-daemon which has a tendency to crash. It seems
slower on writes, but that is strictly anecdotal. With synching off, it
hums along happily.

The perceived win32 process management problems are a total red herring.
The major issues are process startup time and memory system performance
issues wrt using memory mapped files for shared memory. In Postgres's
case, the latter is more important but the performance disparity really
is quite minor (and gets slimmer with each version of windows).

Practical matters of development should outweigh performance
concerns...do you want to be writing a fork, or a port? A functional
server can be optimized a lot easier than a planned one. Are you
comfortable that 320 hours is enough time to complete a threaded
version? Developer skill level and familiarity with the databases
sources will play into that.

Regards,
Merlin