Re: Proposal - asynchronous functions

* Robert Haas (robertmhaas@gmail.com) wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> wrote:
> > Well, this specific thing could be done by just having PG close the
> > client connection, not care that it's gone, and have an implied
> > 'commit;' at the end.  I'm not saying that I like this approach, but I
> > don't think it'd be hard to implement.
>
> Maybe, but that introduces a lot of complications with regards to
> things like authentication.  We probably want some API for a backend
> to say - hey, please spawn a session with the same user ID and
> database association as me, and also provide some mechanism for data
> transfer between the two processes.

The impression I got from the OP is that this function call could be the
last (and possibly only) thing done with this connection.  I wasn't
suggesting that we spawn a new backend to run it (that introduces all
kinds of complexities).  The approach I was suggesting was to just have
the backend close its client connection and then process the function
and then 'commit;' and exit.

Might be interesting as a way to prefix anything, ala:

LAST delete from big_table;

poof, client is disconnected, backend keeps running, etc.

I don't know if that would really be useful to very many people or that
it's something we'd really want to do but it's an interesting idea to be
able to 'background' a process.

I'm certainly all for the bigger projects of having a cron-like
capability and/or being able to spawn off multiple backgrounded queries
from a single connection.
Thanks,
    Stephen