Re: Overhauling GUCS

On Mon, 2 Jun 2008, Tom Lane wrote:

> Greg Smith <gsmith(at)gregsmith(dot)com> writes:
>> Joshua has been banging a drum for a while now that all this data needs to
>> get pushing into the database itself.
>
> This is, very simply, not going to happen.

Right, there are also technical challenges in the way of that ideal. I
was only mentioning the reasons why it might not be the best idea even if
it were feasible. However, I do not see why the limitations you bring up
must get in the way of thinking about how to interact and manage the
configuration data in a database context, even though it ultimately must
be imported and exported to a flat file.

The concerns you bring up again about leaving the database in an
unstartable state are a particularly real danger in the "only has access
to 5432" hosted provider case that this redesign is trying to satisfy. I
added a "Gotchas" section to the wiki page so that this issue doesn't get
forgotten about. The standard way to handle this situation is to have a
known good backup configuration floating around. Adding something in that
area may end up being a hard requirement before remote editing makes
sense.

--
* Greg Smith gsmith(at)gregsmith(dot)com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD