Forking vs. Threading

From: "Bryan Encina" <bryan(dot)encina(at)valleypres(dot)org>
To: <pgsql-advocacy(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Forking vs. Threading
Date: 2004-03-16 20:26:02
Message-ID: 001701c40b94$e6a3db20$931f10ac@AT10111
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Below is a post from the Fedora mailing list as to why one of the users
recommends Firebird over PostgreSQL (this thread came up because of
questions regarding MySQL licensing) and I was wondering if someone from
pgsql advocacy had any comments on this or would like to respond.

Sorry for top posting, but I didn't want to ruin any formatting.

-b

--------------------------------
I like PostgreSQL as far as it's simplicity and things go. It's nice,
and there are some good front ends for it. The one complaint I have
with Postgres is that it forks.

MySQL and Firebird use threads and Postgres forks. Forking is ok,
unless you have many database connections. The more connections the
more processes. I noticed while profiling an application that every
connection alone was taking over 1MB of memory. This based on the
process per connection gripe I have.

So, Postgres, sure I like it, but as far as a major DBMS goes, I think
it is limited by it's memory usage. That's just my opinion on the
matter. However, it is a fact that it forks (forking takes more time
and more resources than threading). One benefit in forking is the same
reason Apache forks( memory leaks can be minimized). However, I think
if a DBMS has that bad of a memory leak....I won't use it.

I like to advocate Firebird as much as possible. It runs on many
platforms and seems to be pretty scalable as far as connections and
usage goes, and it has a very flexible license as well.

I like all three mentioned DBMS, just different reasons for using them
at different times.

Wade

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