Re: Prepared statements considered harmful

On Thu, Aug 31, 2006 at 11:36:36AM -0400, AgentM wrote:
> On Aug 31, 2006, at 11:18 , mark@mark.mielke.cc wrote:
> >I'm attempting to understand why prepared statements would be used for
> >long enough for tables to change to a point that a given plan will
> >change from 'optimal' to 'disastrous'.
> >
> >Wouldn't this require that the tables are completely re-written, or
> >that their data is drastically updated? For my own tables, most of the
> >data remains static for months on end. Data is accumulated. Small
> >changes are made. I don't see why a prepared statement used over a
> >24 hour period would ever become disastrous.

> Scenario: A web application maintains a pool of connections to the  
> database. If the connections have to be regularly restarted due to a  
> postgres implementation detail (stale plans), then that is a database  
> deficiency.

Or a JDBC deficiency. Nobody is forcing JDBC to automatically reuse a
prepared plan indefinately. If automatically prepared, it can
regenerate them whenever it wishes.

Does Oracle automatically regenerate prepared plans on occasion?

I don't consider it a deficiency. It is doing exactly what you are
asking it to do. That it isn't second guessing you isn't a deficiency.
For all PostgreSQL knows, your tables are not changing such that a
query a week later is suddenly disastrous because the consistency of
your data has changed drastically, and what you prepared a week ago,
and chose to execute today, is still the optimal plan.

Cheers,
mark

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