Re: PostgreSQL vs Firebird feature comparison finished

Alban Hertroys wrote:
> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>>> I agree with you on the multi-threaded.  I think I will add a note
>>> saying the the multi-threaded architecture is only advantageous  on
>>> Windows.
>> And Solaris.
>
> I'm not entirely sure what makes multi-threading be advantageous on a
> specific operating system, but I think FreeBSD should be added to that
> list as well... They've been bench marking their threading support using
> multi-threading in MySQL (not for the db, mind you - just for load ;),
> and it performs really well.
>

I'm not sure I necessarily agree with those two - we have no real proof
that a multithreaded architecture would be significantly more efficient
than a multi process. It certainly wouldn't be as robust as an error in
one backend thread could bring down the entire server.

Windows is a special case in this regard. The OS has been designed from
the outset as a threaded environment. The important point is not that
Windows threads are necessarily any more efficient than their Solaris or
FreeBSD counterparts, but that the multi-process architecture is alien
to Windows and is inherently slower. Two of the major bottlenecks we
have on Windows as a result are backend startup time and shared memory
access speed - both of which are significantly slower than on *nix.

Regards, Dave