Re: pg_service.conf

> On Sun, Feb 19, 2006 at 10:00:01AM -0500, Mark Woodward wrote:
>> > It turns out what you like actually exists, lookup the "service"
>> > parameter in the connectdb string. It will read the values for the
>> > server, port, etc from a pg_service.conf file.
>> >
>> > There is an example in the tree but it looks something like the
>> following:
>> >
>> > [servicename]
>> > dbname=blah
>> > user=blah
>> > pass=blah
>> >
>> > So all you need to specify is "service=servicename" and it will grab
>> > the parameters. This allows you to change the connection without
>> > changeing the code.
>> >
>>
>> This is a great feature!!
>>
>> It doesn't seem to be documented in the administrators guide. Its
>> mentioned in the libpq section, and only a reference to
>> pg_service.conf.sample
>
> Indeed, I only just found out about it yesterday. It's a very little
> known feature that needs some advertisement. Right now we need to work
> up some documentation patches so people come across it easier.
>
> Where do you think it should be mentioned?

As it was mentioned in another reply, this is not "everything" I wanted,
but it is a big step closer that makes the rest managable.

As for the "central" administration issue, yes, it is not a central
administration solution, but files like these fall into the category of
one to many "push" strategies, something like "bulkcopy -f targets
pg_service.conf /usr/local/etc"

I think it should be clearly in the administration section of the manual.
A DBA is not going to look at the libpq section, similarly, PHP or Java
developers won't either. I use libpq all the time, the last time I looked
at pq_connect was years ago.

Like I said, this is a REALLY USEFULL feature that should be presented as
the "best method" for specifying databases, in the administration manual.
It should also be mentioned in the PHP API as well.