Re: Large # of rows in query extremely slow, not using index - Mailing list pgsql-performance

On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 21:11:07 -0400, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Stephen Crowley <stephen.crowley@gmail.com> writes:
> > Does postgres cache the entire result set before it begins returning
> > data to the client?
>
> The backend doesn't, but libpq does, and I think JDBC does too.
>
> I'd recommend using a cursor so you can FETCH a reasonable number of
> rows at a time.

That is incredible. Why would libpq do such a thing? JDBC as well? I
know oracle doesn't do anything like that, not sure about mysql. Is
there any way to turn it off? In this case I was just using psql but
will be using JDBC for the app.  About cursors, I thought a jdbc
ResultSet WAS a cursor, am I mistaken?

Thanks,
Stephen