Re: [HACKERS] pg_pwd trigger to be removed

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net> writes:
> Because of the problems that were pointed out, I'm inclined to remove the
> pg_pwd updating trigger again.

Actually, what I'd like to see is a fix that makes the trigger robust.
Maybe that's too much work for 7.0.

If we had a robust solution for this problem, then we could apply the
same method to export a flat-file equivalent of pg_database, which could
be read during backend startup. That would allow us to get rid of some
incredibly grotty (and not 100% reliable) code that tries to read
pg_database before the transaction management code has been fired up :-(

> My new take on the situation is actually that there shouldn't be a reason
> to tinker with the systems catalogs period.

Maybe so, but we still could make good use of an end-of-transaction
trigger to update pg_pwd from pg_shadow. Right now, rollback of a
pg_shadow update doesn't really work right even if you did it via
CREATE/ALTER USER.

regards, tom lane