I seen on this list a lot of energy ( also little flames involving SCO 
& Co. ) spent on thread safety;
was really necessary spent so much energy in this direction?
I was at Fosdem in Bruxelles ( I spoke there about the use
of postgres in my project ) and I seen al people there 
was really exicited about the anticipation of Bruce Momjian 
about the PITR in 7.4 but how we know there was no time for it

May be I'm wrong but I'd like know why thread safety was so
necessary.


Regards
Gaetano Mendola


Mon, 1 Sep 2003 19:06:28 +0200
"Mendola Gaetano" <mendola@bigfoot.com>
thread safety
Probably because I worked on thread safety and produced a patch. If
someone done the same for PITR and produced a patch i'm sure it would
have generated much more interest. I couldn't have done PITR, so no
loss of resource there.

Was Bruce planning to do the PITR work? If so I guess a lot of his
time's been spent on integrating patches and the like - leaving less
time for other developments.

L.

Mendola Gaetano writes:
 > I seen on this list a lot of energy ( also little flames involving SCO 
 > & Co. ) spent on thread safety;
 > was really necessary spent so much energy in this direction?
 > I was at Fosdem in Bruxelles ( I spoke there about the use
 > of postgres in my project ) and I seen al people there 
 > was really exicited about the anticipation of Bruce Momjian 
 > about the PITR in 7.4 but how we know there was no time for it
 > 
 > May be I'm wrong but I'd like know why thread safety was so
 > necessary.
 > 
 > 
 > Regards
 > Gaetano Mendola
 > 

Mon, 1 Sep 2003 18:16:25 +0100
Lee Kindness <lkindness@csl.co.uk>
thread safety
On Mon, Sep 01, 2003 at 18:16:25 +0100,
  Lee Kindness <lkindness@csl.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> Was Bruce planning to do the PITR work? If so I guess a lot of his
> time's been spent on integrating patches and the like - leaving less
> time for other developments.

Bruce was working on the WIN32 port. That will also not make it into
7.4 as a working port. Someone else was working on PITR.

Mon, 1 Sep 2003 14:18:28 -0500
Bruno Wolff III <bruno@wolff.to>
Re: thread safety
Mendola Gaetano wrote:
> I seen on this list a lot of energy ( also little flames involving SCO 
> & Co. ) spent on thread safety;
> was really necessary spent so much energy in this direction?
> I was at Fosdem in Bruxelles ( I spoke there about the use
> of postgres in my project ) and I seen al people there 
> was really exicited about the anticipation of Bruce Momjian 
> about the PITR in 7.4 but how we know there was no time for it
> 
> May be I'm wrong but I'd like know why thread safety was so
> necessary.

The thing that slows me down the most --- trips like FOSDEM.  I am doing
one every month or every other month.  That takes 1/4 of each month. 
The threading discussion took 1/1000 of a month, but I do several
hundred of those, so it fills up a month quickly.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

Mon, 1 Sep 2003 22:59:17 -0400 (EDT)
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Re: thread safety
Mendola Gaetano wrote:
> I seen on this list a lot of energy ( also little flames involving SCO 
> & Co. ) spent on thread safety;
> was really necessary spent so much energy in this direction?
> I was at Fosdem in Bruxelles ( I spoke there about the use
> of postgres in my project ) and I seen al people there 
> was really exicited about the anticipation of Bruce Momjian 
> about the PITR in 7.4 but how we know there was no time for it
> 
> May be I'm wrong but I'd like know why thread safety was so
> necessary.

Also, it isn't that thread-safety is so important, it is that it has to
be added cleanly to the code so it doesn't adversely affect the rest of
the code.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

Mon, 1 Sep 2003 23:00:18 -0400 (EDT)
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Re: thread safety
On Tue, 2 Sep 2003 03:06 am, Mendola Gaetano wrote:
> May be I'm wrong but I'd like know why thread safety was so
> necessary.

It bugged Lee enough that he went and wrote a patch for it. It bugged me 
enough that I couldn't use it on our choice of platform (older Linux) that I 
did some little fixes for that. I worked on what I needed.

If you need a justification for ECPG threading support: people porting from 
Sybase/Informix/Oracle would probably expect ECPG to support threads, and 
will get a nasty surprise when their ported application abruptly dies. I 
expected it to "just work" and was unpleasantly surprised when it didn't.

Best Regards, Philip Yarra.

Tue, 2 Sep 2003 13:46:24 +1000
Philip Yarra <philip@utiba.com>
Re: thread safety
"Bruce Momjian" <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> wrote:
> The thing that slows me down the most --- trips like FOSDEM.  I am doing
> one every month or every other month.  That takes 1/4 of each month. 
> The threading discussion took 1/1000 of a month, but I do several
> hundred of those, so it fills up a month quickly.

I understand you, I seen you there just two day and seem that you 
are someone that is not able to say: NO.

I remember that in Bruxelles Peter Eisentraut was there too, why 
not found some one that replace you?  
Some time at least :-)


Regards
Gaetano Mendola


Fri, 5 Sep 2003 17:37:04 +0200
"Mendola Gaetano" <mendola@bigfoot.com>
Re: thread safety

[ CC to advocacy.]

Mendola Gaetano wrote:
> "Bruce Momjian" <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> wrote:
> > The thing that slows me down the most --- trips like FOSDEM.  I am doing
> > one every month or every other month.  That takes 1/4 of each month. 
> > The threading discussion took 1/1000 of a month, but I do several
> > hundred of those, so it fills up a month quickly.
> 
> I understand you, I seen you there just two day and seem that you 
> are someone that is not able to say: NO.

I can say "no" if this group tells me it is more important that I focus
on PostgreSQL development and not on the speeches.  The question is what
is going to advance PostgreSQL faster.

> I remember that in Bruxelles Peter Eisentraut was there too, why 
> not found some one that replace you?  
> Some time at least :-)

We do have other people doing events all the time.  Comdex will be
attended by a lot of our folks.  We also have folks attending local user
group meetings and making speeches.

However, many presentations have special requirements:

	o full-time employed in PostgreSQL, or willing to take vacation
	  time to make those speeches
	o ability to speak in front of a large groups and communicate well
	o ability to create long presentations
	o someone visible in PostgreSQL who can act as a representative

No, not all events require all those items, but many do, and that's why
I end up doing them.  I don't mind it (it is quite interesting) but it
does take me away from managing PostgreSQL.  (I have also started taking
my 10-year-old son with me, and that is fun.)

I almost always offer to give them a local person who can make a
presentation in their native language.  Sometimes they accept that, but
mostly they don't.  :-)

FYI, I am often able to merge two events into one trip.  For the FOSDEM
talk, I came from a talk in Japan, and after the Denmark talk in
January, I will travel to Paris for a talk on February 3-5.  (I will
post that event to the PostgreSQL news page now.)

Also, consider that I work at home, so I am home 100% of the time when I
am not traveling, so the trips aren't as difficult as they would be for
someone who is at work for 12 hours every weekday.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

Fri, 5 Sep 2003 12:36:50 -0400 (EDT)
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Re: thread safety