Re: Proposal to add a QNX 6.5 port to PostgreSQL

Andres Freund <andres(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
> On 2014-08-04 10:54:25 -0400, Robert Haas wrote:
>> I believe that multiple people have said multiple times that we should
>> change the behavior so that orphaned backends exit immediately; I
>> think you are the only one defending the current behavior. There are
>> several problems with the status quo:

> +1. I think the current behaviour is a seriously bad idea.

I don't think it's anywhere near as black-and-white as you guys claim.
What it comes down to is whether allowing existing transactions/sessions
to finish is more important than allowing new sessions to start.
Depending on the application, either could be more important.

Ideally we'd have some way to configure the behavior appropriately for
a given installation; but short of that, it's unclear to me that
unilaterally changing the system's bias is something our users would
thank us for. I've not noticed a large groundswell of complaints about
it (though this may just reflect that we've made the postmaster pretty
darn robust, so that the case seldom comes up).

regards, tom lane