Re: Add A Glossary

On 2020-Jun-09, Jürgen Purtz wrote:

> Can you agree to the following definitions? If no, we can alternatively
> formulate for each of them: "Under discussion - currently not defined". My
> proposals are inspired by chapter 2.2 Concepts: "Tables are grouped into
> databases, and a collection of databases managed by a single PostgreSQL
> server instance constitutes a database cluster."

After sleeping on it a few more times, I don't oppose the idea of making
"instance" be the running state and "database cluster" the on-disk stuff
that supports the instance.  Here's a patch that does things pretty much
along the lines you suggested.

I made small adjustments to "SQL objects":

* SQL objects in schemas were said to have their names unique in the
schema, but we failed to say anything about names of objects not in
schemas and global objects.  Added that.

* Had example object types for global objects and objects not in
schemas, but no examples for objects in schemas.  Added that.


Some programs whose output we could tweak per this:
pg_ctl
> pg_ctl is a utility to initialize, start, stop, or control a PostgreSQL server.
>  -D, --pgdata=DATADIR   location of the database storage area
to:
> pg_ctl is a utility to initialize or control a PostgreSQL database cluster.
>  -D, --pgdata=DATADIR   location of the database directory

pg_basebackup:
> pg_basebackup takes a base backup of a running PostgreSQL server.
to:
> pg_basebackup takes a base backup of a PostgreSQL instance.


-- 
Álvaro Herrera                https://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services