Hi Tom,
You said that trapping an arbitrary exception is a “fairly expensive mechanism”. What if the: begin …. exception when others then null; end; would be replaced with begin …. exception when NO_DATA_FOUND then null; end; When the code is catching a certain exception: NO_DATA_FOUND does this make any difference? Or it’s all about the process of setting up and ending a subtransaction? Thanks, Denisa Cîrstescu -----Original Message----- From: Tom Lane [mailto:t...@sss.pgh.pa.us] Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2017 9:00 PM To: David G. Johnston <david.g.johns...@gmail.com> Cc: Denisa Cirstescu <denisa.cirste...@tangoe.com>; pgsql-general@postgresql.org Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Catching errors inside a LOOP is causing performance issues "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johns...@gmail.com<mailto:david.g.johns...@gmail.com>> writes: > Not sure how much detail you are looking for but the docs say this: > "Tip: A block containing an EXCEPTION clause is significantly more > expensive to enter and exit than a block without one. Therefore, don't > use EXCEPTION without need." > https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.p > ostgresql.org%2Fdocs%2Fcurrent%2Fstatic%2Fplpgsql-control-structures.h > tml%23PLPGSQL-ERROR-TRAPPING&data=01%7C01%7CDenisa.Cirstescu%40tangoe. > com%7C6243898de8ae4141290a08d505d194e6%7C3ba137049b66408a9fb9db51aba57 > 9e4%7C0&sdata=iTBlh1PpcvJQiBZNPjDxsu7ExT%2BP%2BAirqr9Upz9sbJQ%3D&reser > ved=0 > I'm somewhat doubting "plan caching" has anything to do with this; I > suspect its basically that there is high memory and runtime overhead > to deal with the possibilities of needing to convert a exception into > a branch instead of allowing it to be fatal. Yeah, it's about the overhead of setting up and ending a subtransaction. That's a fairly expensive mechanism, but we don't have anything cheaper that is able to recover from arbitrary errors. regards, tom lane