Re: What language is faster, C or PL/PgSQL?

2013/2/5 Bruce Momjian :
> On Mon, Feb  4, 2013 at 08:33:02AM -0600, Merlin Moncure wrote:
>> On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 11:36 AM, Carlo Stonebanks
>>  wrote:
>> > Here is an advantage Plpgsql has:
>> > http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/plpgsql-expressions.html
>> >
>> > I guess you can offset this by creating your own prepared statements i=
n C.
>> > Otherwise, I can=E2=80=99t think of how C could be slower. I would cho=
ose C for
>> > functions that don=E2=80=99t have SQL statements in them =E2=80=93 e.g=
. math and string
>> > processing.
>>
>> For cases involving data processing (SPI calls), C can be slower
>> because pl/pgsql has a lot of optimizations in it that can be very
>> easy to miss.  I don't suggest writing backend C functions at all
>> unless you are trying to interface with a C library to access
>> functionality currently not exposed in SQL.
>
> How is PL/pgSQL faster than C?  I thought we had optimized PL/pgSQL to
> save parsed functions, but I don't see how that would help with queries,
> which use SPI.  Am I missing something?

PL/pgSQL can be faster than badly written C functions if there are
bottle neck is in server side routines. Any well written C code will
be faster then well written PL/pgSQL - how much depends on specific
use case. If bottle neck is in IO op, then not too much - PL/pgSQL has
not any specific optimization, that cannot be used in C.

Regards

Pavel

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>   Bruce Momjian          http://momjian.us
>   EnterpriseDB                             http://enterprisedb.com
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