Subject: Re: Database restore speed
From: Mitch Skinner <mitch@egcrc.net>
To: Luke Lonergan <llonergan@greenplum.com>
Cc: Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net>, David Lang <dlang@invendra.net>,
	Steve Oualline <soualline@stbernard.com>, pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
In-Reply-To: <BFB5FB8F.14EA1%llonergan@greenplum.com>
References: <BFB5FB8F.14EA1%llonergan@greenplum.com>
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Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2005 19:26:06 -0800
Message-Id: <1133580366.3367.123.camel@enzian>
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On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 13:24 -0800, Luke Lonergan wrote:
> It's a matter of safety and generality - in general you
> can't be sure that client machines / OS'es will render the same conversions
> that the backend does in all cases IMO.

Can't binary values can safely be sent cross-platform in DataRow
messages?  At least from my ignorant, cursory look at printtup.c,
there's a binary format code path.  float4send in utils/adt/float.c uses
pq_sendfloat4.  I obviously haven't followed the entire rabbit trail,
but it seems like it happens.

IOW, why isn't there a cross-platform issue when sending binary data
from the backend to the client in query results?  And if there isn't a
problem there, why can't binary data be sent from the client to the
backend?

Mitch