Re: PL/java? - Mailing list pgsql-general

On Sun, 26 Aug 2001, Alex Knight wrote:

> I keep hearing all this talk about Java being slow, and how compiled Java is
> nearly as slow as interpreted languages... If Java was _that_ slow, do you
> think it would be powering a majority of the Enterprise level sites out there?

Have you ever actually used Java on an enterprise-level application?  Ever
see the Tomcat webserver?  It uses 100MB of memory, drives the load on our
server up to 8, and doesn't serve nearly as fast apache.  Do you really
want that in your database?

It isn't slow just because of the interpretation, or the byte-code, or the
structure, or even the overhead.  It's slow because every application must
have a hulking JVM sitting in memory, bringing even fast machines to their
knees in short order.  Not even perl, with everything it does, is that
big, nor does it affect a machine so adversely.  Ever wonder why most
JVM's stay in memory after they start?

Compare the speed of Oracle 8 with 8i if you don't believe me.  The
stability is also much worse.  Ever see a JVM on any platform that didn't
crash if you looked at it cockeyed?  Ever really trust the garbage
collection?  I don't.  I've found a memory leak in IBM developed java
libraries.  Gotta restart that app every once in a while to reclaim
system resources it gobbled up and never gave back.

Merits of the language notwithstanding, I'd rather not have a buggy, still
under development (depreciating everything under the sun with every new
iteration) JVM parasite in my DB.

So... you want a larger, slower, memory leaking, more crash-prone DB just
to have java support?

Personally, I hope the Postgres developers don't make the same mistake as
the Oracle developers.  Yuck.

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| Shaun M. Thomas                INN Database Programmer              |
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