Re: Proposal: Store "timestamptz" of database creation on "pg_database"

* Robert Haas (robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com) wrote:
> Well, IMHO, there is no need for any syntax change at all. CREATE
> TABLE and CREATE DATABASE should just record the creation time
> somewhere, and that's all. If you dump-and-reload, the creation time
> changes. Deal with it, or hack your catalogs if you really care that
> much.

I'd be alright with this also, tbh. Not preserving such information
across pg_dump's wouldn't really be all *that* much of a loss.

As for hacking at the catalogs, I do find that a rather terrible
recommendation, ever. I'm currently trying to convince people at $work
that hacking at pg_database to modify datallowconns is really not a
good or ideal solution (and requires a lot more people to have
superuser rights than really should, which is practically no one, imo).
Annoyingly, we don't seem to have a way to ALTER DATABASE to set that
value, although I *think* 'connection limit = 0' might be good enough.

> I find the suggestion of using event triggers for this to miss the
> point almost completely. At least in my case, the time when you
> really wish you had some timestamps is when you get dropped into a
> customer environment and need to do forensics. The customer will not
> have installed the convenient package of event triggers at database
> bootstrap time. Their environment will likely be poorly configured
> and completely undocumented; that's why you're doing forensics, isn't
> it?

Exactly, that's what I was trying to get at upstream.

> I know this has been discussed and rejected before, but I find that
> rejection to be wrong-headed. I have repeatedly been asked, with
> levels of exasperation ranging from mild to homicidal, why we don't
> have this feature, and I have no good answer. If it were somehow
> difficult to record this or likely to produce a lot of overhead, that
> would be one thing. But it isn't. It's probably a hundred-line
> patch, and AFAICS the overhead would be miniscule.

+1

Thanks,

Stephen