Message-ID: <5548095A.1040900@gmx.net>
Date: Mon, 04 May 2015 20:05:46 -0400
From: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
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To: Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net>
CC: Fujii Masao <masao.fujii@gmail.com>,
 Sawada Masahiko <sawada.mshk@gmail.com>,
 David Steele <david@pgmasters.net>, Simon Riggs <simon@2ndquadrant.com>,
 Tatsuo Ishii <ishii@postgresql.org>,
 PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>,
 Abhijit Menon-Sen <ams@2ndquadrant.com>
Subject: Re: Auditing extension for PostgreSQL (Take 2)
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On 5/4/15 3:00 PM, Stephen Frost wrote:
> One particular advantage of having the extension is that having it
> doesn't impact existing users of the in-core logging system.  I don't
> recall any specific proposals for improving the in-core logging system
> to add the capabilities for session logging that the extension
> provides, but it seems likely to require changes to at least the CSV
> format, new log_line_prefix escape codes (which we're using quite a
> few of already...), new GUCs, and potentially behavior changes to make
> it work.  As I say above, I'm happy to have those discussions (and
> I've been party to them quite a few times in the past...),

Well yeah, from my perspective, the reason not much has happened in the
area of logging is that you and Magnus have repeatedly said you were
planning some things.

The reasons given above against changing logging just as easily apply to
auditing.  This implementation is only a starting point.  We don't know
whether it will fulfill anyone's requirements.  The requirements for
logging are "it feels good enough for an admin".  The requirements for
auditing are "it satisfies this checklist".  We need to be prepared to
aggressively evolve this as we gather more information about
requirements.  Otherwise this will become something like contrib/isn,
where we know it doesn't satisfy real-world uses anymore, but we're
afraid to touch it because someone might be using it and we don't have
the domain knowledge to tell them to stop.


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