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Comment by sarchertech

3 years ago

There are many times when the start order doesn’t really matter, and the additional sorting overhead isn’t worth it. In those cases people will still tend to refer to the entity holding the jobs to be processed as a queue despite the fact that it doesn’t strictly follow FIFO order.

If they are being technically precise, queue isn’t the correct term, but language changes with context and time. Either way the implementation isn’t wrong if strict start order has been considered and isn’t important.

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sarchertech

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nsonha  3 years ago

you're confusing between "i don't care about order", and "there is no order". Name ONE queue implementation that doesn't have order.

  • sarchertech  3 years ago

    Here you go. One of the first tutorials explaining how SKIP LOCKED works in Postgres implants a job “queue” that doesn’t have an order by clause. https://www.pgcasts.com/episodes/the-skip-locked-feature-in-...

    I’m not confusing anything. I’ve seen random selection “job queues” implemented many times. As long as you truly don’t care about start order, it’s fine to trade it for increased throughout.

    • nsonha  3 years ago

      > doesn’t have an “order by” clause

      Does that mean it doesn't have any order or that whoever writes the query doesn't care about order?

      Also we are arguing over whether pg suffices as a queue implementation, and you use itself as an example?

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