Re: elegant and effective way for running jobs inside a database

> >
> > Keep in mind that it's not about coding in C but mostly about figuring
> > out what a sane design out to look like.
> >
>

While I can straddle the fence pretty my first reaction is that we are talking about "application" functionality that falls outside what belongs in "core" PostgreSQL. I'd rather see pgAgent be improved and act as a basic implementation while, for more complex use-cases, letting the community/marketplace provide solutions.

Even with simple use-cases you end up having a separate process continually running anyway. The main benefit to linking with core would be the ability to startup that process after the server starts and shutdown the process before the server shutdown. That communication channel is something to consider outside this specific application and, if done, could be used to talk with whatever designated "pgAgent"-like application the user chooses. Other applications could also be communicated with in this way. Basically some form of API where in the postgres.conf file you specify which IP addresses and ports you wish to synchronize and which executable to launch just prior to communicating on said port. If the startup routine succeeds that Postgres will, within reason, attempt to communicate and wait for these external process to finish before shutting down. If the external application closes it should proactively notify Postgres that it is doing so AND if you startup a program manually it can look for and talk with a running Postgres instance.

David J.