Re: location of the configuration files

Peter Bierman wrote:

> At 12:31 AM -0500 2/13/03, mlw wrote:
>
>> The idea that a, more or less, arbitrary data location determines the 
>> database configuration is wrong. It should be obvious to any 
>> administrator that a configuration file location which controls the 
>> server is the "right" way to do it.
>
>
>
> Isn't the database data itself a rather significant portion of the 
> 'configuration' of the database?
>
> What do you gain by having the postmaster config and the database data 
> live in different locations? 

While I don't like to use another product as an example, I think amongst 
the number of things Oracle does right is that it has a fairly standard 
way for an admin to find everything. All one needs to do is find the 
"ORACLE_HOME" directory, and everything can be found from there.

If, assume, PostgreSQL worked like every other system. It would have 
either an entry in /etc or some other directory specified by configure.

Somene please tell me how what I'm proposing differs from things like 
sendmail, named, or anyother standards based UNIX server?