Re: Proof of concept: standalone backend with full FE/BE protocol - Mailing list pgsql-hackers
| From | Gurjeet Singh |
|---|---|
| Subject | Re: Proof of concept: standalone backend with full FE/BE protocol |
| Date | |
| Msg-id | CABwTF4XQr826QrdHWfX=gPNr1faq5g8QMZbcG4ik2vN_Ga_XDQ@mail.gmail.com Whole thread Raw |
| In response to | Proof of concept: standalone backend with full FE/BE protocol (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>) |
| Responses |
Re: Proof of concept: standalone backend with full FE/BE protocol
(Aidan Van Dyk <aidan@highrise.ca>)
Re: Proof of concept: standalone backend with full FE/BE protocol (Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka@iki.fi>) |
| List | pgsql-hackers |
On Sun, Sep 2, 2012 at 8:23 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
Since we are forking a child process anyway, and potentially other auxiliary processes too, would it make sense to allow multiple backends too (allow multiple local applications connect to this instance)? I believe (I may be wrong) that embedded databases (SQLLite et. al.) use a library interface, in that the application makes a library call and waits for that API call to finish (unless, of course, the library supports async operations or the application uses threads). The implementation you are proposing uses socket communication, which lends itself very easily to client-server model, and if possible, it should be leveraged to provide for multiple applications talking to one local DB.
I have this use case in mind: An application is running using this interface, and an admin now wishes to do some maintenance, or inspect something, so they can launch local pgAdmin using the same connection string as used by the original application. This will allow an admin to perform tuning, etc. without having to first shutdown the application.
Notably, while the lack of any background processes is just what you want
for pg_upgrade and disaster recovery, an ordinary application is probably
going to want to rely on autovacuum; and we need bgwriter and other
background processes for best performance. So I'm speculating about
having a postmaster process that isn't listening on any ports, but is
managing background processes in addition to a single child backend.
That's for another day though.
Since we are forking a child process anyway, and potentially other auxiliary processes too, would it make sense to allow multiple backends too (allow multiple local applications connect to this instance)? I believe (I may be wrong) that embedded databases (SQLLite et. al.) use a library interface, in that the application makes a library call and waits for that API call to finish (unless, of course, the library supports async operations or the application uses threads). The implementation you are proposing uses socket communication, which lends itself very easily to client-server model, and if possible, it should be leveraged to provide for multiple applications talking to one local DB.
I have this use case in mind: An application is running using this interface, and an admin now wishes to do some maintenance, or inspect something, so they can launch local pgAdmin using the same connection string as used by the original application. This will allow an admin to perform tuning, etc. without having to first shutdown the application.
Here's how this might impact the design (I may very well be missing many other things, and I have no idea if this is implementable or not):
.) Database starts when the first such application is launched.
.) Database shuts down when the last such application disconnects.
.) Postgres behaves much like a regular Postgres installation, except that it does not accept connections over TCP/IP or Unix Doamin Sockets.
.) The above implies that we use regular Postmaster machinery, and not the --sinlgle machinery.
.) Second and subsequent applications use the postmaster.pid (or something similar) to find an already running instance, and connect to it.
.) There's a race condition where the second application is starting up, hoping to connect to an already running insatnce, but the first application disconnects (and hence shuts down the DB) before the second one can successfully connect.
I haven't thought much about the security implications of this yet. Maybe the socket permissions would restrict an unauthorized user user from connecting to this instance.
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