Re: max_standby_delay considered harmful

On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 11:52 PM, Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> wrote:
> I am afraid the current setting is tempting for users to enable, but
> will be so unpredictable that it will tarnish the repuation of HS and
> Postgres.  We don't want to be thinking in 9 months, "Wow, we shouldn't
> have shipped that features.  It is causing all kinds of problems."  We
> have done that before (rarely), and it isn't a good feeling.

I am not convinced it will be unpredictable.  The only caveats that
I've seen so far are:

- You need to run ntpd.
- Queries will get cancelled like crazy if you're not using steaming
replication.

That just doesn't sound that bad to me, especially since the proposed
alternative is:

- Queries will get cancelled like crazy, period.

Or else:

- Replication can fall infinitely far behind and you can write a
tedious and error-prone script to try to prevent it if you like.

I think THAT is going to tarnish our reputation.

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