Re: PostgreSQL vs Firebird feature comparison finished

Dave Page wrote:
> Alban Hertroys wrote:
>> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>>>> I agree with you on the multi-threaded. I think I will add a note
>>>> saying the the multi-threaded architecture is only advantageous on
>>>> Windows.
>>> And Solaris.
>>
>> I'm not entirely sure what makes multi-threading be advantageous on a
>> specific operating system, but I think FreeBSD should be added to that
>> list as well... They've been bench marking their threading support using
>> multi-threading in MySQL (not for the db, mind you - just for load ;),
>> and it performs really well.
>>
>
> I'm not sure I necessarily agree with those two - we have no real proof
> that a multithreaded architecture would be significantly more efficient
> than a multi process. It certainly wouldn't be as robust as an error in
> one backend thread could bring down the entire server.
>
> Windows is a special case in this regard. The OS has been designed from
> the outset as a threaded environment. The important point is not that
> Windows threads are necessarily any more efficient than their Solaris or
> FreeBSD counterparts, but that the multi-process architecture is alien
> to Windows and is inherently slower. Two of the major bottlenecks we
> have on Windows as a result are backend startup time and shared memory
> access speed - both of which are significantly slower than on *nix.
>
> Regards, Dave

Thanks for explaining (again).

So actually the remark shouldn't be that "the multi-threaded
architecture is only advantageous on Windows", but more like "the
multi-process architecture is disadvantageous on Windows and hence a
multi-threaded architecture is preferred (on that particular OS)".

--
Alban Hertroys
alban(at)magproductions(dot)nl

magproductions b.v.

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