To: Jan Wieck <JanWieck@Yahoo.com>
Cc: Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu>, pgsql-interfaces@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Lost updates vs resumable connections/transactions
References: <Pine.A41.4.58.0412091641060.68588@zivunix.uni-muenster.de>
	<41C06961.8020406@Yahoo.com> <87is73qrde.fsf@stark.xeocode.com>
	<m2y8fyl58u.fsf@pcwi4002.uni-muenster.de> <41C1CE7A.10405@Yahoo.com>
	<m21xdpkpgy.fsf@pcwi4002.uni-muenster.de> <41C306A1.1070807@Yahoo.com>
From: Jens Lechtenboerger <lechten@wi.uni-muenster.de>
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 18:04:33 +0100
In-Reply-To: <41C306A1.1070807@Yahoo.com> (Jan Wieck's message of "Fri, 17
	Dec 2004 11:17:37 -0500")
Message-ID: <m2sm64j1pa.fsf@pcwi4002.uni-muenster.de>
User-Agent: Gnus/5.1006 (Gnus v5.10.6) Emacs/21.2 (gnu/linux)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Jan Wieck <JanWieck@Yahoo.com> writes:

> [...]
> The PostgreSQL team members (me included) are big fans of
> portability. Introducing code that solves a problem for one specific web
> server,

I don't see how this is web server specific?

> in the special case of a small number of application users,

Actually, I'm not sure that this should bother you.  As I wrote
previously: I can put just the same load on the database server
using Java applets right now.  In fact, the load with applets would
even be higher, as the database server does not receive any hint
when the connection is idle for some time...

> in a non portable way for only a couple operating systems

I get this point.

> and where the resulting functional difference is visible to the
> database client ...

If it wasn't visible, then it would be useless for me.

> I don't think this idea has much of a chance to make it into the
> source tree.

I'm disappointed, though, and summarize:
PostgreSQL transactions cannot be used naturally with CGI/PHP, and
virtually every web application out there is prone to lost updates.

Thank you very much for your feedback anyways.

Jens