Re: idle in transaction with mod_perl

On Fri, Oct 04, 2002 at 08:04:37PM +0530, mallah(at)trade-india(dot)com wrote:
> I too use mod_perl + postgresql
> its perfectly ok to have "idle in transaction..."

Well, not really. But it's probably normal. See below.

> the persistant connections makes all the difference.

For some reason, most of the persistent
connection/pooling/auto-commit=off approaches in PostgreSQL issue a
BEGIN as soon as a transaction ends.

The problem with this is that several maintenance types of things --
VACUUM FULL being the most obvious -- will conflict with these kinds
of transactions. If you happen to have a connection that stays idle
this way for a long time, it can cause you some little bits of grief
(like by not reclaiming as much disk as it otherwise would, or not
recycling as much in a non-blocking VACUUM, or other similar things).

The real answer is to change the connection pooling &c. But since
that's not likely to happen in a lot of cases, you should just make
sure that you don't perpetually leave around idle connections.

A

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