This is why most DBMS products do their own memory management. They just suck up as much memory as you will allow and use it for their own devices. Specialized, tunable, application-level memory management will probably always beat a general-purpose, application-ignorant OS-based scheme.
But, there's something to be said for the simplicity - for most folks you don't need to manage the memory yourself. When you need it though, there's really no easy substitute.
> But, there's something to be said for the simplicity - for most folks you don't need to manage the memory yourself.
Yes, and most people don't need to implement printf() themselves, which is why there is libc. Just because you're doing it in-process, in user space, doesn't mean you're rolling your own!
But, there's something to be said for the simplicity - for most folks you don't need to manage the memory yourself. When you need it though, there's really no easy substitute.