Re: Auditing extension for PostgreSQL (Take 2)

On 2/18/15 8:25 AM, Simon Riggs wrote:
> On 15 February 2015 at 02:34, David Steele <david(at)pgmasters(dot)net> wrote:
>
>> I've posted a couple of messages over the last few weeks about the work
>> I've been doing on the pg_audit extension. The lack of response could
>> be due to either universal acclaim or complete apathy, but in any case I
>> think this is a very important topic so I want to give it another try.
>
> You mentioned you had been following the thread for some time and yet
> had not contributed to it. Did that indicate your acclaim for the
> earlier patch, or was that apathy? I think neither.

In my case it actually was acclaim. I was happy with the direction
things were going and had nothing in particular to add - and I didn't
think a +1 from me was going to carry any weight with the community.

I can see now that everyone's opinion matters here, so I'll be more
active about weighing in when I think something is valuable.

>
> People have been working on this feature for >9 months now, so you
> having to wait 9 days for a response is neither universal acclaim, nor
> apathy. I've waited much longer than that for Stephen to give the
> review he promised, but have not bad mouthed him for that wait, nor do
> I do so now. In your first post you had removed the author's email
> addresses, so they were likely unaware of your post. I certainly was.

I understand that, but with the CF closing I felt like I had to act.
Abhijit's last comment on the thread was that he was no longer going to
work on it in relation to 9.5. I felt that it was an important feature
(and one that I have a lot of interest in), so that's when I got involved.

I posted two messages, but I only addressed one of them directly to
Abhijit. As you said, I'm new here and I'm still getting used to the
way things are done.

>> I've extensively reworked the code that was originally submitted by
>> 2ndQuandrant. This is not an indictment of their work, but rather an
>> attempt to redress concerns that were expressed by members of the
>> community. I've used core functions to determine how audit events
>> should be classified and simplified and tightened the code wherever
>> possible. I've removed deparse and event triggers and opted for methods
>> that rely only on existing hooks. In my last message I provided
>> numerous examples of configuration, usage, and output which I hoped
>> would alleviate concerns of complexity. I've also written a ton of unit
>> tests to make sure that the code works as expected.
>
> Some people that have contributed ideas to this patch are from
> 2ndQuadrant, some are not. The main point is that we work together on
> things, rather than writing a slightly altered version and then
> claiming credit.
>
> If you want to help, please do. We give credit where its due, not to
> whoever touched the code last in some kind of bidding war. If we let
> this happen, we'd generate a flood of confusing patch versions and
> little would ever get committed.

Agreed, and I apologize if I came off that way. It certainly wasn't my
intention. I was hesitant because I had made so many changes and I
wasn't sure how the authors would feel about it. I wrote to them
privately to get their take on the situation.

> Let's keep to one thread and work to include everybody's ideas then
> we'll get something useful committed.

I'm a little confused about how to proceed here. I created a new thread
because the other patch had already been rejected. How should I handle
that?

--
- David Steele
david(at)pgmasters(dot)net