Re: proposal: schema variables

Nico Williams <nico(at)cryptonector(dot)com> writes:
> With access controls, GUCs could become schema variables, and settings
> from postgresql.conf could move into the database itself (which I think
> would be nice).

People re-propose some variant of that every so often, but it never works,
because it ignores the fact that some of the GUCs' values are needed
before you can access system catalogs at all, or in places where relying
on system catalog access would be a bad idea.

Sure, we could have two completely different configuration mechanisms
so that some of the variables could be "inside the database", but that
doesn't seem like a net improvement to me. The point of the Grand Unified
Configuration mechanism was to be unified, after all.

I'm on board with having a totally different mechanism for session
variables. The fact that people have been abusing GUC to store
user-defined variables doesn't make it a good way to do that.

regards, tom lane