Re: SASL, compression?

On Sat, 18 May 2002 11:39:51 -0600 (MDT)
"Bear Giles" <bgiles(at)coyotesong(dot)com> wrote:
> 1) add SASL. This is a new standards-track protocol that is often
> described as "PAM" for network authentication. PostgreSQL could
> remove *all* protocol-specific authentication code and use
> standard plug-in libraries instead.

I'm not that clueful about SASL -- would this mean that we could get
rid of the PostgreSQL code that does SSL connections, plus MD5, crypt,
ident, etc. based authentication, and instead just use the SASL stuff?
Or would SSL/TLS support need to co-exist with SASL?

> 2) add ZLIB compression.

This was discussed before, and the conclusion was that compression
is of fairly limited utility, and can be accomplished by using
ssh -- so it's not worth the bloat. But there were some dissenting
opinions at the time, so this might merit further discussion...

> The biggest drawback, at least initially, is that the initial
> exchange will need to be totally rewritten.

I'd like to see a FE/BE protocol change in 7.4, so this might be a
possibility at that point.

Cheers,

Neil

--
Neil Conway <neilconway(at)rogers(dot)com>
PGP Key ID: DB3C29FC