Re: Killing inactive connections

Andrew Gould <andrewgould(at)yahoo(dot)com> writes:
> Is there a way in PostgreSQL to track inactivity and
> close inactive connections after a specified length of
> time?

Not at present. This seems to me to be something that has to be
implemented on the client side, anyway. We could conceivably implement
an idle-timeout in the backend, but what it would be measuring is time
between SQL requests, which proves little about whether there is someone
awake at the other end. Two counterexamples:

1. User starts a long-running SQL script and walks away. Backend will
not time out, but you're not meeting the regulation.

2. User is intensely interacting with his app, but is doing something
that does not trigger SQL requests. Backend times out and drops
connection. At the very least this annoys the user; quite possibly
it causes him to lose work, depending on how robust his app is about
reconnecting.

So I don't think that this is an issue for Postgres to solve. If Access
can't do it, maybe you need a different frontend app that can.

regards, tom lane