Re: xlog viewer prototype and new proposal

On Fri, Jul 07, 2006 at 11:59:41AM -0300, Diogo Biazus wrote:
> On 07 Jul 2006 09:58:29 -0400, Greg Stark <gsstark(at)mit(dot)edu> wrote:
> > That's the main reason I think a stand-alone module makes more
> >sense. You can always take a stand-alone module and stick an
> >interface to it into the server. You can't take code meant to run in
> >the server and build a stand-alone environment to run it.
>
> Sure.
> On the last part off the proposal I've suggested some improvements to the
> stand-alone tool, any other ideas?

Something I've been thinking of while reading this thread. One big
disadvantage of doing it in the backend is that your methods of
returning data are limited. Your resultset can only return one "type".
For example, if you start decoding all the different types of xlog
packets, you're going to get different information for each. To display
that as the output of a function you're going to have to munge them
into a common format. An external program does not suffer this
limitation.

In the future it may be worthwhile making a library that can be used by
both an external program and the postgres backend, but really, that
seems a lot less work than doing the actual decoding itself...

Hope this helps,
--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog(at)svana(dot)org> http://svana.org/kleptog/
> From each according to his ability. To each according to his ability to litigate.