Re: Including PL/PgSQL by default

On Thursday 21 February 2008 21:33, Tom Lane wrote:
> Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com> writes:
> > On Thursday 21 February 2008 11:36, Tom Lane wrote:
> >> Would it satisfy people if plpgsql were in postgres, but neither
> >> template DB, after initdb?
> >
> > No, the real-world use-case we're trying to satisfy is hosted and/or
> > locked-down installations where the developer doesn't have superuser
> > access. So putting it in "postgres" wouldn't help with that.
>
> That statement is content-free, Josh. Exactly what are you assuming
> this developer *does* have? For example, if he hasn't got createdb
> privilege, it will hardly matter to him whether any DBs other than
> "postgres" contain plpgsql. If he does have createdb, it's already
> possible by default for him to create trusted languages including
> plpgsql in his new DB. So it's still 100% unclear to me who we are
> catering to.
>

There are a lot of people who have a database provider of some sort who
creates a database for them, giving them ownership of that specific database,
with pg_hba.conf specifying connection only to that db. They are then free to
muck about that database, installing anything they want, but they cannot load
any procedural languages since they only have non-superuser accounts. (This
does give them access to plsql, but not plpgsql). Sadly a lot of these
arrangements preclude (for valid reasons or not) the installation of any
contrib modules or installation of any procedural languages. It is these
users that 3rd party application developers (ie. mediawiki types) are trying
to accommodate. They would like to be able to take advantage of plpgsql in
their applications, but without it being included by default they have to
exclude it from their application.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL