Re: Behaviour patterns on pgsql (7.1.3)

Denis Braekhus <denis(at)startsiden(dot)no> writes:
> Every now and then postgresql gets "too busy" and these patterns emerge :

> - some connections are just idling and not being reaped (presumably either the
> browser/client or the apache webserver timed out the request)
> - these connections stack up to a point where the other "live" queries are
> handled so inefficiently that pgsql enters a "bad downwards spiral".
> (Meaning it cannot serve enough requests fast enough due to high load. The
> number of connections increases, giving again more load, and so on ... )

This strikes me as a fault on the client side, not in Postgres --- to
wit, poor connection management. It is not Postgres' job to kill idle
client connections.

But having said that, I do not think that idle connections per se would
cause any performance degradation on the server side. Perhaps they also
have open transactions that are holding locks that other queries need?
That again is really a client-side bug...

regards, tom lane