Re: Can I get some PostgreSQL developer feedback on these five general issues I have with PostgreSQL and its ecosystem?

On 21/09/2020 17:53, Joshua Drake wrote:
> 3. The ability to embed PG to run in an automatic, quiet manner as part
> of something else. I know about SQLite, but it's extremely limited to
> the point of being virtually useless IMO, which is why I cannot use that
> for anything nontrivial. I want my familiar PostgreSQL, only not require
> it to be manually and separately installed on the machine where it is to
> run as part of some "application". If I could just "embed" it, this
> would allow me to create a single EXE which I can simply put on a
> different machine to run my entire "system" which otherwise takes *tons*
> of tedious, error-prone manual labor to install, set up and maintain. Of
> course, this is probably much easier said than done, but I don't
> understand why PG's architecture necessarily dictates that PG must be a
> stand-alone, separate thing. Or rather, why some "glue" cannot enable it
> to be used just like SQLite from a *practical* perspective, even if it
> still is a "server-client model" underneath the hood. (Which doesn't
> matter at all to me, nor should it matter to anyone else.)

It depends what you mean by "embedded".
If you want sqlite's linked library approach, where the database calls
literally run your process' address space, then that's a no go, as
postgres is a multi-user database server with its own process hierarchy.


However, postgres also is a rather agnostic command that does not detach
from the parent's terminal/stdio unless instructed to, so nothing stops
your bespoke application from launching and managing its own postmaster
as a directly managed child process - started as part of application
initialisation - and having that listen on a local socket only available
to the application itself; this is what we implemented in some of our
installations where postgres is enslaved to the cluster control system -
the configuration is re-generated at every restart (IIRC Patroni does
something similar minus the unix socket part).


A plethora of systems are built around the notion of programs calling
other programs and managing the process' life cycle. The limiting factor
to such architecture tends to be the OS's process control semantics and
API (notoriously weaker or more contrived on non-unix-like OSs), but
that's not postgres' fault.





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Regards

Fabio Ugo Venchiarutti
OSPCFC Network Engineering Dpt.
Ocado Technology

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