Re: When the Session ends in PGSQL? - Mailing list pgsql-general

On Monday 04 July 2011 10:48:48 Durumdara wrote:
> 1.) DataBases need to close the resources kept by Sessions.
> 2.) There is need some "border", or a rule to split - which Session is
> considered as "finished".

So far so good.

> The FireBird is uses "DummyPacketInterval" to recognize dead sessions,
> EDB uses "Session Timeout" value for it.
> The EDB can still alive if network connection lost, if before Timeout
> the client also send a sign to the server.
>
> To I can use PGSQL also, I need to know the limitations, and how to
> handle the connections, how to manage them.
>
> I wondering to PGSQL handle this with living TCP connections, because
> this is may out of our control.
> If we have a timeout value, we can control, which time we have, and
> what time is acceptable for a Session.
> For example: some places we have that uses wifi connections are
> sometimes broken for just a little period. This is enough to
> disconnect, but because of higher "Session Timeout" variable our
> DataBase connections still alive without close the applications.
>
> Another thing is sign (packet). We must do something periodically to
> keep alive the connection. For example: every 1 minutes we do some
> dummy thing one server, like "select date" or etc.

AFAIK postgres doesn't distinguish between a "TCP session" and a "database
session" like (if I understand you correctly) FireBird/EDB does. You cannot
reconnect and say "hello it's me again from session FOOBAR, can I resume that
session ?". I believe you'll have to solve this at the application layer :

* Make transactions, locks, temp tables, etc as short-lived as possible (this
   is always a good thing to do anyway).
* If that's still not enough, store your "current working state" in a purpose-
   built table and add logic in your client to reinitialize session state
   using that data, and to purge the data after it has been used / timed out.

Another thing you could do (but I'm not sure it is a good idea) is to write a
proxy application that runs on the server machine and understands your session
requirements. Then connect your application to this proxy instead of the
database.

--
Vincent de Phily
Mobile Devices
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+353 (0) 85 710 6320

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