Re: Proposal: http2 wire format

On Sat, Mar 24, 2018 at 06:52:47PM +0100, Damir Simunic wrote:
> Hello hackers,
>
> I’d like to propose the implementation of new wire protocol using http2 framing.

Welcome to the PostgreSQL community! This is a very interesting idea.
Please send a patch to this mailing list on this thread.

In order to get and keep it on the radar, you should know about how
development works in PostgreSQL.

http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Development_information

In particular, please look at: http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Submitting_a_Patch

I notice that you patched 10. New features, and this is definitely
one, go against git master.

> It appears to me that http2 solves many of the issues on the TODO
> list under “Wire Protocol Changes / v4 Protocol,“ without any
> obvious downsides.

Here are a few things to consider, at least from my perspective:

- Docs. Gotta have some: https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Documentation_Tools

- Testing. Gotta have some in src/test/regress in the source tree.

- Tight coupling to OpenSSL, if that's actually what's happening.
We're actively trying to get away from this, so a TLS-neutral
implementation or at least one that's not specific to OpenSSL would
be good.

- Overhead for all clients. It may be tiny, but it needs to be
measured and that cost needs to be weighed against the benefits.
Maybe a cache miss in the context of a network connection is
negligible, but we do need to know.

- Dependency on a new external library. Fortunately, it's MIT
licensed, so it's PostgreSQL compatible, but what happens if it
becomes unmaintained? This has happened a couple of times, and it
causes overhead that needs to be taken into account.

> My hope is that this post leads to a conversation and gets a few
> people excited about the idea the way I am. Maybe even some of the
> GSoC students would take the implementation further?

The conversation has started.

Again, welcome, and thanks for jumping in!

Best,
David.
--
David Fetter <david(at)fetter(dot)org> http://fetter.org/
Phone: +1 415 235 3778

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