Re: ALTER SYSTEM SET command to change postgresql.conf parameters (RE: Proposal for Allow postgresql.conf values to be changed via SQL [review])

On 07/26/2013 12:19 PM, Stephen Frost wrote:
> Agreed. To continue that thought, I find it *very* unlikely that a
> given environment would use *both* a tool like puppet to manage the
> files in their conf.d *and* have people using ALTER SYSTEM SET. You're
> going to do one or the other, almost certainly; not the least of which
> is because those are very likely two different teams and only one of
> them is going to be responsible for the PG system config.

Ideally, yes. And that's the reason why I think that we will need to
implement a way to disable ALTER SYSTEM SET in postgresql.conf before
9.4.0 is done. The big-Puppet-management shops will demand it; they do
NOT want their DBAs setting unversioned settings in isolation on one
database server out of 200.

However, I can imagine "hybrid" approaches. For example, my personal
main use for conf.d/ is to modify logging settings on a temporary basis.
I can imagine DBAs using ALTER SYSTEM SET for this purpose as well,
that is just to turn log_min_duration_statement down to 0 and then back
up again.

In that case, most of the "live" settings would live in /etc/postgresql,
but some of the logging settings would be controlled with ALTER SYSTEM
SET> That conceptually seems to work fine with the existing design, I
just wanted to bring it up as a likely use case.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com