Stored Procedure Performance

Hi,

I'm trying to evaluate PostgreSQL as a database that will have to store
a high volume of data and access that data frequently. One of the
features on our wish list is to be able to use stored procedures to
access the data and I was wondering if it is usual for stored procedures
to perform slower on PostgreSQL than raw SQL?

A simple example of this can be shown with the following commands:

First I created a test table:

CREATE TABLE test (

id int8,

name varchar(128),

description varchar(500),

constraint "pk_test" primary key (id)

);

Then the function I want to test:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION readTest() RETURNS SETOF test AS

$$

DECLARE

row test%ROWTYPE;

BEGIN

FOR row IN SELECT * FROM test LOOP

RETURN NEXT row;

END LOOP;

RETURN;

END;

$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

Firstly, I ran EXPLAIN on the raw SQL to see how long that takes to
access the database the results are as follows:

EXPLAIN ANALYZE SELECT * FROM test;

Seq Scan on test (cost=0.00..10.90 rows=90 width=798) (actual
time=0.003..0.003 rows=0 loops=1)

Total runtime: 0.074 ms

(2 rows)

Secondly, I ran EXPLAIN on the function created above and the results
are as follows:

EXPLAIN ANALYZE SELECT * FROM readTest();

Function Scan on readtest (cost=0.00..12.50 rows=1000 width=798)
(actual time=0.870..0.870 rows=0 loops=1)

Total runtime: 0.910 ms

(2 rows)

I know that the function is planned the first time it is executed so I
ran the same command again to remove that processing from the timings
and the results are as follows:

EXPLAIN ANALYZE SELECT * FROM readTest();

Function Scan on readtest (cost=0.00..12.50 rows=1000 width=798)
(actual time=0.166..0.166 rows=0 loops=1)

Total runtime: 0.217 ms

(2 rows)

Event with the planning removed, the function still performs
significantly slower than the raw SQL. Is that normal or am I doing
something wrong with the creation or calling of the function?

Thanks for your help,

Simon

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