Re: Proof of concept: standalone backend with full FE/BE protocol

On 09/05/2012 10:14 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Aidan Van Dyk <aidan(at)highrise(dot)ca> writes:
>> So, in the spirit of not painting ourselves into a tiny corner here on
>> the whole "single backend" and "embedded database" problem with pg
>> options, can we generalize this a bit?
>> Any way we could make psql connect to a "given fd", as an option? In
>> theory, that could be something opened by some out-side-of-postgresql
>> tunnel with 3rd party auth in the same app that uses libpq directly,
>> or it could be a fd prepared by something that specifically launched
>> a single-backend postgres, like in the case of pg_upgrade, pg_uprade
>> itself, and passed to psql, etc, which would be passed in as options.
> This seems to me to be going in exactly the wrong direction. What
> I visualize this feature as responding to is demand for a *simple*,
> minimal configuration, minimal administration, quasi-embedded database.
> What you propose above is not that, but is if anything even more
> complicated for an application to deal with than a regular persistent
> server. More complication is *the wrong thing* for this use case.
>
> The people who would be interested in this are currently using something
> like SQLite within a single application program. It hasn't got any of
> the features you're suggesting either, and I don't think anybody wishes
> it did.
>
>

Exactly. I think it's worth stating that this has a HUGE potential
audience, and if we can get to this the deployment of Postgres could
mushroom enormously. I'm really quite excited about it.

cheers

andrew