On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 03:34:45PM -0500, Andrew Chernow wrote: > On 2/23/2011 3:06 PM, Peter Geoghegan wrote: >> On 23 February 2011 15:34, Merlin Moncure<mmonc...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> You can send nested arrays safely. You just have to be very formal >>> about escaping *everything* both as you get it and as it goes into the >>> container. This is what postgres does on the backend as it sends >>> arrays out the door in text. It might be instructive to see what the >>> server does in terms of escaping. Note that the way this works it's >>> not impossible to see 128+ consecutive backslashes when dealing with >>> arrays of composites. >> >> Sounds tedious. >> > > It is tedious, which is one reason why libpqtypes went binary. There are > some compelling performance reasons as well that affect both client and > server. > > libpqtypes was originally developed to serve a very particular need and > wasn't aiming to be general purpose. That came about along the way trying > to solve the problem. Personally, PQexec is dead to me as well as text > results from a C/C++ app. I see no advantage over libpqtypes in that > context. > > Unless I am missing your ultimate goal, you'd probably get what you want by > wrapping libpqtypes. >
The performance is one of the big reasons to use binary parameters. Converting/packing/transmitting/unpacking/converting use a lot of CPU resources on both the server and the client in addition to the larger communication resources needed by the text-based methods. Ken -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
