PostgreSQL Connection Pooling: Part 2 – PgBouncer

When it comes to connection pooling in the PostgreSQL world, PgBouncer is probably the most popular option. It’s a very simple utility that does exactly one thing – it sits between the database and the clients and speaks the PostgreSQL protocol, emulating a PostgreSQL server. A client connects to PgBouncer with the exact same syntax it would use when connecting directly to PostgreSQL – PgBouncer is essentially invisible.

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PostgreSQL Connection Pooling: Part 1 – Pros & Cons

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, ‘threads’ were a programming novelty rarely used and seldom trusted. In that environment, the first PostgreSQL developers decided forking a process for each connection to the database is the safest choice. It would be a shame if your database crashed, after all.

Since then, a lot of water has flown under that bridge, but the PostgreSQL community has stuck by their original decision. It is difficult to fault their argument – as it’s absolutely true that:

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Sharding and Connection Pools

Hi we are looking at sharding our existing Java/Oracle based application. We are looking to make the app servers able to process requests for multiple (any?) shard. The concern that has come up is the amount of memory that would be consumed by having so many connection pools on one app server. Additionally there is concern about having so many physical connections to the database server coming from all the various app servers that may talk to that particular shard. I was wondering if anyone else has dealt with this issue and how you resolved it? Thanks, Scott

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