To: "Ross J. Reedstrom" <reedstrm@rice.edu>
cc: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>, John McKown <joarmc@swbell.net>,
	Postgresql Docs ML <pgsql-docs@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: the docs, and newbies. 
In-reply-to: <20010122104617.A18089@rice.edu> 
References: <200101220341.WAA07325@candle.pha.pa.us>
	<17193.980136282@sss.pgh.pa.us> <20010122104617.A18089@rice.edu>
Comments: In-reply-to "Ross J. Reedstrom" <reedstrm@rice.edu>
	message dated "Mon, 22 Jan 2001 10:46:17 -0600"
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 11:59:41 -0500
Message-ID: <21890.980182781@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

"Ross J. Reedstrom" <reedstrm@rice.edu> writes:
> 'Admin' is shorter, has just as long a precedent (or longer) than
> superuser, has more of the _right_ connotations in the database community,
> and none of the overloading concerning system priviliges that 'superuser'
> has.

"Admin" might work.  Thinking about this some more, I realize that there
are three distinct concepts that we are fuzzing together.  It might help
if we adopted different terms for:

* The actual *person* responsible for the database.  Use in contexts
like "The DBA must make sure that ...".  In some places we avoid this
by using the pronoun "you", but people often find that too informal.

* The Unix account ID under which the postmaster runs.  The existing
docs mostly refer to this as "the postgres account", which is a problem
because one keeps wanting to add an asterisk to it ("* or whatever
account you are running the postmaster under").

* The one or more Postgres usernames that are marked "usesuper" in
pg_shadow.  If we keep the term "superuser" it should be reserved
for this meaning.

			regards, tom lane