>
> Without re-using prepared statements or portals, extended protocol is
> always slow because it requires more messages exchanges than simple
> protocol. In pgbench case, it always sends parse, bind, describe,
> execute and sync message in each transaction even if each transaction
> involves identical statement ("SELECT 1" in your case).
>
> See the manual for the protocol details.
>I'm well aware of how the extended protocol works, but it seems odd for a 30% increase in processing time to be the result exclusively of processing 5 messages instead of just 1 - it doesn't seem like that big a deal (although I may be mistaken). I was imagining that there's something more fundamental in how the protocol or PostgreSQL state is managed internally, that would be responsible for the slowdown.
