"Clayton Vernon" <cvernon@enron.com> writes:
> 1) Do you have to specify in advance the full number of processes, or does =
> it dynamically manage them ala Apache?
You have to set an upper limit on the max number of server processes.
This is mainly to prevent Postgres from taking over your system ;-).
Hopefully you can set it high enough to not be a problem in practice.
> 2) If your site was busy, will requests queue up civilly or will they typic=
> ally bomb right away if they can't find an idle process.
Connections will be refused if the server process limit is reached.
> 5) This seemingly full-fledged password overhead is worrisome. Is this tedi=
> ous to manage in practice? Can the same (quasi-generic) user be reading the=
> database from many simultaneous processes?
There are several different options for authentication methods ---
probably you can find one that matches your combination of security and
simplicity concerns. Yes, the same userid can be used for multiple
connections at once.
regards, tom lane