On 29/09/2010 10:52, Leonardo Francalanci wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
> I need to generate aggregates of data coming from a stream.
>
> I could easily doing it inserting data coming from the stream into a table,
> and then query it using something like:
>
> select<my aggregation function> from atable group by<a column list>
>
> The problem with this approach is that I would have to wait for the whole
> stream to be finished before making the above query; since we're talking
> about 20M+ rows, it would take some time for the query to finish.
>
> What if I do something like:
>
> select<my aggregation function> from my_fifo_function([...])
> group by<a column list>
>
> where my_fifo_function reads data from the stream and returns "rows" as
> soon as they are available on the stream? This way I would get the reply
> as soon as the stream has finished (assuming postgresql can keep up
> with that). In other words, the query would be made even before the
> stream has "started", and would last at least as long as the stream.
>
> (of course, I don't need data from the stream to be saved in any way,
> that's why I don't need to store it in any table).
>
> Does postgresql read data from a function returning a SETOF row by row?
> Or it waits the whole function to be finished (caching the whole resultset)
> before starting to use the returned data? If it reads row by row I think it
> could work...
In pl/pgsql at any rate, functions which return a set of rows build up
the entire result set in memory and then return the set in one go:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/plpgsql-control-structures.html#PLPGSQL-STATEMENTS-RETURNING
...see the note at the end of this section.
Ray.
--
Raymond O'Donnell :: Galway :: Ireland
rod@iol.ie
