Re: Glossary and initdb definition work for "superuser" and database/cluster

On 2022-Nov-02, David G. Johnston wrote:

> Version 2 attached, some significant re-working. Starting to think that
> initdb isn't the place for some of this content - in particular the stuff
> I'm deciding to move down to the Notes section. Might consider moving some
> of it to the Server Setup and Operation chapter 19 - Creating Cluster (or
> nearby...) [1].
>
> I settled on "cluster owner" over "cluster user" and made the terminology
> consistent throughout initdb and the glossary (haven't looked at chapter 19
> yet). Also added it to the glossary.

Generally speaking, I like the idea of documenting these things.
However it sounds like you're not done with the wording and editing, so
I'm not committing the whole patch, but it seems a good starting point
to at least have some basic definitions. So I've extracted them from
your patch and pushed those. You can already see it at
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/glossary.html

I left out almost all the material from the patch that's not in the
glossary proper, and also a few phrases in the glossary itself. Some of
these sounded like security considerations rather than part of the
definitions. I think we should have a separate chapter in Part III
(Server Administration) that explains many security aspects; right now
there's no hope of collecting a lot of very important advice in a single
place, so a wannabe admin has no chance of getting things right. That
seems to me a serious deficiency. A new chapter could provide a lot of
general advice on every aspect that needs to be considered, and link to
the reference section for additional details. Maybe part of these
initdb considerations could be there, too.

> Moved quite a bit of material to notes from the description and options and
> expanded upon what had already been said based upon various discussions
> I've been part of on the mailing lists.

Please rebase.

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Álvaro Herrera 48°01'N 7°57'E — https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/
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