"Jeffrey Bigham" <jbigham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > I also have some vague understanding that C might be faster. I hope I'm > not opening a can-of-worms, but is C actually faster? C should theoretically be faster than any of the alternatives you mention, all else being equal (eg, you are implementing the identical algorithm in each language). Whether the difference is enough to notice is another question --- for example, if effectively all the runtime is spent inside SQL queries, shaving a few microseconds off the time it takes you to issue the queries isn't going to improve your life. You also have to consider the larger effort you'll need to put into coding in C ... it's a pretty low-level language by any modern standard. That effort might more profitably be spent elsewhere, eg improving the SQL queries themselves. My advice is don't code in C until it's clear you have to. If you can prototype in plpgsql or plperl or pl-your-favorite-language, do that first and get it working; and then recode in C if the performance is so bad you can't stand it (and you can prove that the cycles are actually spent in your PL code and not somewhere else like the SQL engine). About the only time I'd not do it that way is if my problem involves data structures too complex to express nicely in my-favorite-pl or if I need access to low-level database details that aren't exposed by my-favorite-pl. regards, tom lane
