At 02:01 PM 14/07/2005 +0000, you wrote:

> >
> > Nope. Haven't heard a dicky-bird about what the database server is
>being
> > asked to do, or how intensively it's being asked to do it.
> >
> > I'm baffled, though, as to why you think your Python client script and
> > (unspecified) operations being executed by Fb server processes
>should show
> > up with roughly equal CPU usage. Can you give *us* any insights on
>this
> > subject? What's your script telling the database to do? Do these
> > operations ever finish? etc., etc.
> >
> > ./hb
>
>I sense some defensiveness......

Not! :-) Just curiosity...and I'm still curious....

>What my script essentially does to get a list of primary keys from A
>table using kinterbasdb.cursor.execute() method and roll out as a
>Python list using kinterbasdb.cursor.fetchall(). For each of the
>elements in the list (primary keys), it is used to pull out a record
>in another table for processing and insert the results (usually a few
>records) into another table. This process is repeated for about 500k
>times.

All of these are *database* operations, not Python operations. All Python
is doing here is composing pieces to slot into API function structures
(very minimal on CPU, since it's all reusable code). Once it submits its
request, all it has to do is wait for something to come back - again,
pieces packaged in reusable structures and handled with reusable code.

>Yes, all operations finishes. More than a thousand records are
>retrieved and processed and many thousands inserted every hour.

OK - all those thousands of operations are database server activity - as
mentioned by others, very amenable to using CPU.

You ought to be as curious as I am, as to why your system administrator is
wetting his knickers about a database MANAGEMENT server using
CPU. Processing stuff is what *REAL* database management systems
do. Isn't it...? :-))

./hb