Constant WAL replay

[Hans-Jürgen Schönig <postgres(at)cybertec(dot)at>]

We have toyed around with PostgreSQL's WAL structure and we are 
wondering whether it is (theoretically) possible to replay WAL records 
coming from a remote host while a system is working in read only mode.

The idea: We are looking for a way to implement a synchronous 
single-master / multiple slaves systems.
Meanwhile we are able to serialize / deserialize WAL records and send 
them to a group communication system which transports those records to 
the slave database.
This is not hard to do. The problem is: How can we replay data on the 
slave while the slave is answering read-only SQL-statements?

As far as I understand the code we can either recover the system or 
answer SQL statements. Which kind of modifications are necessary to 
replay and answer at the same time? (assuming that locks and 
transactional information are available on the slave).

Input is very much appreciated.

	Best regards,

		Hans

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