Re: Binary tx format for an array?

[Dave Cramer <pg(at)fastcrypt(dot)com>]

On 23-Jun-06, at 8:47 AM, Michael Guyver wrote:

> > > :) good question, I'm sure I'll stare it in the face soon  
> > enough. At
> > > the moment I'm labouring under the impression that individual
> > > parameters can be specified as binary or text.
> >
> > Unfortunately this is not possible. :( And one of the reasons that
> > I've not spent a lot of time on this.
>
> Hi Dave,
>
> the page Message Formats
> (http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/protocol-message- 
> formats.html)
> specifies that the bind message should send the following for each
> parameter:
>
>    Int16 - The number of parameter format codes that follow (denoted
> C below). This can be zero to indicate that there are no parameters or
> that the parameters all use the default format (text); or one, in
> which case the specified format code is applied to all parameters; or
> it can equal the actual number of parameters.
>
>    Int16[C] - The parameter format codes. Each must presently be zero
> (text) or one (binary).
>
> Does your understanding of the spec mean that the Int16[C] must either
> be an array containg all zero's, or all ones? It reads as though these
> can be mixed.

Actually, it's the return value that is either/or . It appears that  
input parameters can be mixed.

Tom can they be mixed going in ?

I'm very curious to see how much performance gain can be had here. As  
I said the real gains would be on result sets especially parsing date/ 
time, timestamps.
>