Re: ALTER SYSTEM SET command to change postgresql.conf parameters (RE: Proposal for Allow postgresql.conf values to be changed via SQL [review])

Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net>

From: Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net>
To: Cédric Villemain <cedric@2ndquadrant.com>
Cc: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org, Andres Freund <andres@2ndquadrant.com>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>, Amit Kapila <amit.kapila16@gmail.com>, Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org>, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com>, Dimitri Fontaine <dimitri@2ndquadrant.fr>, Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>, Fujii Masao <masao.fujii@gmail.com>
Date: 2013-08-30T12:53:25Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
* Cédric Villemain (cedric@2ndquadrant.com) wrote:
> ALTER ROLE ALL may be good enougth to handle every GUC that we can also remove 
> from postgresql.conf (I suppose all GUC needing only a reload, not a restart). 
> It may needs some improvement to handle changing default for ALL and adding 
> new role.

Yes, one of the issues with the existing system is that you can't
specify a default to be applied to new roles.  Also, there are
parameters which are not per-role yet which it probably makes sense to
be in the database and we'd need a way to deal with that.  Although, at
the same time, considering it role based does make for a nice
distinction.  Unfortunately, those clammoring for this will argue that
it wouldn't replace adminpack and that they couldn't use it to modify
their /etc/network/interfaces file, which is the obvious next step to
all of this.

> Grammar can be added later when the feature is stable.

I tend to agree w/ Andres on this point- the grammar isn't really the
contentious part.  I think I see where you were going with this in that
excluding the grammar makes it able to live as a module, but that's a
different consideration.

> I've commented one of the proposed patch adding some helpers to validate GUC 
> change, I claimed this part was good enough to be added without ALTER SYSTEM 
> (so a contrib can use it).

Perhaps..

	Thanks,

		Stephen