Message-ID: <48AA7FC5.6070800@hagander.net>
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:09:41 +0200
From: Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net>
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.16 (X11/20080724)
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To: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com>
CC: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, Gregory Stark <stark@enterprisedb.com>,
	Greg Smith <gsmith@gregsmith.com>,
	Michael Nacos <m.nacos@gmail.com>, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Overhauling GUCS
References: <7473.1212625397@sss.pgh.pa.us>
	<200807161530.m6GFUNY28751@momjian.us>
	<407fa4640808130738s3537ca45j22322a5eb70f9173@mail.gmail.com>
	<Pine.GSO.4.64.0808171610220.22642@westnet.com>
	<407fa4640808180426q26a41cv817deb91dbbcd312@mail.gmail.com>
	<Pine.GSO.4.64.0808181250190.17947@westnet.com>
	<87y72u178j.fsf@oxford.xeocode.com> <3447.1219088424@sss.pgh.pa.us>
	<20080818215010.GC4454@alvh.no-ip.org>
In-Reply-To: <20080818215010.GC4454@alvh.no-ip.org>
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Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> Tom Lane escribió:
>> Gregory Stark <stark@enterprisedb.com> writes:
>>> The entire target market for such a thing is DBAs stuck on hosted databases
>>> which don't have shell access to their machines. Perhaps the overlap between
>>> that and the people who can write a server-side module which dumps out a
>>> config file according to some rules is just too small?
>> There's a veritable boatload of stuff we do that assumes shell access
>> (how many times have you seen cron jobs recommended, for instance?).
>> So I'm unconvinced that "modify the config without shell access"
>> is really a goal that is worth lots of effort.
> 
> Actually, lots of people are discouraged by suggestions of using cron to
> do anything.  The only reason cron is suggested is because we don't have
> any other answer, and for many people it's a half-solution.  An
> integrated task scheduler in Pg would be more than welcome.

Yes, I hear a lot of people complaining aobut that too. Now that we have
a working autovacuum, some of it goes away though - no need to cron your
VACUUMs in most cases anymore. But there are still backups - but they
are often managed by the scheduler of an enterprise backup software.


> Also, remember that pgAdmin already comes with a pgAgent thing.

Yeah, it's a real life-saver on Windows where the builtin task-scheduler
isn't as readily accessible or easy to use..

//Magnus