This test compares the performance of selecting text type values with the text format or the binary format. It creates a temporary table of 5 text columns populated with 1000 rows where each text value is 16 characters.
Run the test with go test -bench=.. The database connection can be controlled with the standard PG* environment variables.
The binary format seems to have a significant performance penalty.
jack@glados ~/dev/pg_text_binary_bench » psql -c 'select version()'
version
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
PostgreSQL 12.3 on x86_64-apple-darwin19.4.0, compiled by Apple clang version 11.0.3 (clang-1103.0.32.59), 64-bit
(1 row)
jack@glados ~/dev/pg_text_binary_bench » go test -bench=.
goos: darwin
goarch: amd64
pkg: github.com/jackc/pg_text_binary_bench
BenchmarkSelectText/text_format-16 2989 349023 ns/op
BenchmarkSelectText/binary_format-16 2767 404590 ns/op
PASS
ok github.com/jackc/pg_text_binary_bench 2.514s