Re: Merging postgresql.conf and postgresql.auto.conf

On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 4:07 PM, David Johnston
<david(dot)g(dot)johnston(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> sourceline and sourcefile pertain only to the current value while the point
> of adding these other pieces is to provide a snapshot of all the different
> mappings that the system knows about; instead of having to tell a user to go
> look in two different files (and associated includes) and a database catalog
> to find out what possible values are in place. That doesn't solve the need
> to scan the catalog to see other possible values - though you could at least
> put a counter in pg_settings that indicates how many pg_db_role_setting
> entries reference the given variable so that if non-zero the user is clued
> into the fact that they need to check out said catalog table.

This last proposal seems pointless to me. If the user knows about
pg_db_role_setting, they will know to check it; if they don't, a
counter won't fix that. I can see that there might be some utility to
a query that would tell you, for a given setting, all sources of that
setting the system knew about, whether in configuration files,
pg_db_role_setting, or the current session. But I don't see that
putting information that's already available via one system catalog
query into a different system catalog query helps anything - we should
presume DBAs know how to write SQL.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company