Re: High Frequency Inserts to Postgres Database vs Writing to a File

[David Saracini <dsaracini@xxxxxxxxx>]

"could be several 1000 records a second."

So, are there periods when there are no/few records coming in?  Do the records/data/files really need to be persisted?  

The following statement makes me think you should go the flat file route:

"The advantage of running complex queries to mine the data in various different ways is very appealing"

Please don't be offended, but that sounds a little like feature creep.  I've found that it's best to keep it simple and don't do a bunch of work now for what might be requested in the future.

I know it's not exactly what you were looking for...  Just food for thought.

Best of luck!

David

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From: Jay Manni <JManni@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "pgsql-performance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <pgsql-performance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tue, November 3, 2009 7:12:29 PM
Subject: High Frequency Inserts to Postgres Database vs Writing to a File

Hi:

 

I have an application wherein a process needs to read data from a stream and store the records for further analysis and reporting. The data in the stream is in the form of variable length records with clearly defined fields – so it can be stored in a database or in a file. The only caveat is that the rate of records coming in the stream could be several 1000 records a second.

 

The design choice I am faced with currently is whether to use a postgres database or a flat file for this purpose. My application already maintains a postgres (8.3.4) database for other reasons – so it seemed like the straightforward thing to do. However I am concerned about the performance overhead of writing several 1000 records a second to the database. The same database is being used simultaneously for other activities as well and I do not want those to be adversely affected by this operation (especially the query times). The advantage of running complex queries to mine the data in various different ways is very appealing but the performance concerns are making me wonder if just using a flat file to store the data would be a better approach.

 

Anybody have any experience in high frequency writes to a postgres database?

 

- Jay