Re: Big 7.1 open items

Tom Lane wrote:

> Thomas Lockhart <lockhart(at)alumni(dot)caltech(dot)edu> writes:
> > Well, as y'all have noticed, I think there are strong reasons to use
> > environment variables to manage locations, and that symlinks are a
> > potential portability and robustness problem.

> Reasons? Evidence?

Does Win32 do symlinks these days? I know Win32 does envvars, and Win32
is currently a supported platform.

I'm not thrilled with either solution -- envvars have their problems
just as surely as symlinks do.

> At the moment I can recall the following opinions:

> Pure OID filenames: Thomas, Tom, Marc, Peter E.

FWIW, count me here. I have tried administering my system using the
filenames -- and have been bitten. Better admin tools in the PostgreSQL
package beat using standard filesystem tools -- the PostgreSQL tools can
be WAL-aware, transaction-aware, and can provide consistent results.
Filesystem tools never will be able to provide consistent results for a
database system that must remain up 24x7, as many if not most PostgreSQL
installations must.

> OID+relname filenames: Bruce

Sorry Bruce -- I understand and am sympathetic to your position, and, at
one time, I agreed with it. But not any more.

--
Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio
1 Peter 4:11