Re: Slightly OT.

On Sat, 2007-06-02 at 00:05 +0200, Alexander Staubo wrote:
> On 6/2/07, Gregory Stark <stark(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> wrote:
> > "Alexander Staubo" <alex(at)purefiction(dot)net> writes:
> >
> > > I would love for the answer to have been "sorry, we did not have time
> > > or manpower enough to implement fully transparent replication yet,
> > > because it's a rather complex, you see";
> >
> > Would you still love that if you're one of the people who use replication to
> > move the data to a reporting database which has a modified schema appropriate
> > for the different usage? This improvement would make it useless for that
> > purpose.
>
> All you would require is a simple boolean flag to enable or disable
> automatic DDL propagation, surely. Clearly people use replication for
> different purposes; the current system favours people who prefer to
> handle DDL propagation manually, and I am not one of them.
>

Here is some work going on that looks like what you want:

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2007-03/msg00050.php
http://momjian.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/pgtodo?pitr

You might also seriously consider PgPool-II.

There are many, many approaches to replication, high-availability, and
related topics. For almost any combination of log-based, query-based,
trigger-based and synchronous, asynchronous and master/master,
master/slave and shared storage, local storage -- there is some PG
person working on it.

They all have advantages and disadvantages. The one, specific type of
replication that suits you is not necessarily what everyone else wants.

Try to understand that some of these options are built around businesses
out of *need* rather than want. Businesses *need* functionality and
flexibility. Administrative simplicity and conveniences (like replicated
DDL) are obviously not the only goals of something like Slony-I.

Regards,
Jeff Davis