[Haskell-cafe] Re: HDBC-postgresql and safe/unsafe FFI calls

[John Goerzen]

On 09/03/2010 06:14 PM, David Powell wrote:
> Hi John,
>
> My current usage of hdbc is in a server process that takes requests from
> multiple clients, queries the database, and returns a result.  Having a
> single db query block everything else isn't really workable for me.  I
> suspect this will also be an issue for others.  As an example, the
> persistent-postgresql package which is part of the new Yesod web
> framework will have the same problem.
>
> I can send you a patch, but I am concerned with the issue Leon raised
> about libpq needing to be compiled with thread support.  This is the
> default on my platforms (macosx, debian), but probably is dangerous to
> rely on.  I guess we can just test the result of 'PQisthreadsafe()', in
> connectPostgreSQL and raise an error if it is false.

Or at least a warning to stderr -- that won't be a problem for 
single-threaded programs, right?

>
> Cheers,
>
> -- David
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 1:36 AM, John Goerzen <jgoerzen at complete.org
> <mailto:jgoerzen at complete.org>> wrote:
>
>     Hi David,
>
>     I've had varying arguments from people that want me to mark things
>     safe or unsafe for various performance reasons.  I'm happy to apply
>     your change if you like.  Can you send me a diff (and attach your
>     explanation here to it, which I'll use as a commit message for
>     future reference)?
>
>     Thanks,
>
>     -- John
>
>
>     On 09/01/2010 09:40 PM, David Powell wrote:
>
>         Greetings,
>
>         I'm having an issue with the HDBC-postgresql package that
>         requires me to
>         manually patch it before installation for most of my use cases.
>
>         All the FFI calls in this package are marked "unsafe".
>           Unfortunately,
>         this means that whenever I issue a slow sql query, all other
>         processing
>         stops.  In most places that I want to use this module, I've had to
>         manually patch it to at least mark the PQexec and PQexecParams
>         calls as
>         "safe".
>
>         Is there any reason these calls should not be marked as "safe"?  I
>         understand that there a little extra runtime overhead with this,
>         but I'd
>         have thought that negligible given all the other processing that
>         goes on
>         with these particular calls under the hood.
>
>         Cheers,
>
>         --
>         David Powell
>
>
>