Re: newbie ?'s

"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