What language is faster, C or PL/PgSQL?

[Ovnicraft]

On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 10:42 AM, Karel Riverón Escobar <

Hi people,
I need to write an algorithm for processing large amounts of data. I want
to write a function on PgAdmin 3 to solve my problem. I need to know what
language should be used, C or PL/PgSQL?
Needless to say, what I need is quickly. What language is faster, C or
PL/PgSQL?

Hello, performance processing data is not 100% related to language, IMO is
more related with algorithm.
You need to check your algorithm and order.

Answering your question i suggest you C could be some ugly but will be
faster, in this point could be good read an opinion from any PG hacker.

Regards,

Greetings, Karel Riverón
University of Informatics Science

[Carlo Stonebanks]

Here is an advantage Plpgsql has:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/plpgsql-expressions.html



I guess you can offset this by creating your own prepared statements in C.
Otherwise, I can’t think of how C could be slower. I would choose C for
functions that don’t have SQL statements in them – e.g. math and string
processing.



From: pgsql-general-***@postgresql.org
[mailto:pgsql-general-***@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of Karel Riverón
Escobar
Sent: February 2, 2013 10:42 AM
To: pgsql-***@postgresql.org
Subject: [GENERAL] What language is faster, C or PL/PgSQL?



Hi people,

I need to write an algorithm for processing large amounts of data. I want to
write a function on PgAdmin 3 to solve my problem. I need to know what
language should be used, C or PL/PgSQL?

Needless to say, what I need is quickly. What language is faster, C or
PL/PgSQL?



Greetings, Karel Riverón
University of Informatics Science

[Merlin Moncure]

On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 11:36 AM, Carlo Stonebanks

Post by Carlo Stonebanks
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/plpgsql-expressions.html
I guess you can offset this by creating your own prepared statements in C.
Otherwise, I can’t think of how C could be slower. I would choose C for
functions that don’t have SQL statements in them – e.g. math and string
processing.

For cases involving data processing (SPI calls), C can be slower
because pl/pgsql has a lot of optimizations in it that can be very
easy to miss. I don't suggest writing backend C functions at all
unless you are trying to interface with a C library to access
functionality currently not exposed in SQL.

merlin