Re: Can we have time based triggers in Postgresql??

Jan Wieck wrote:
> Gregory Wood wrote:
>> The only real advantage I see are for those people in hosting
>> environments that don't really have access to cron. I suppose it's
>> also valuable in making your scripts more portable as you wouldn't
>> need to make further alterations to the system beyond restoring a
>> database backup or whatnot.
>
> and as soon as one would implement such stuff the users will be asking
> "and how do I execute shell commands from inside the DB?". Now that
> would be good thing. In preparation for that we should make the
> postmaster run under root, so that the pgcron functionality can start
> those external commands as any user! </irony>

I think you stretched well beyond the scope of my comments, but since
you brought it up... yes, it can be handy to execute shell commands from
inside the DB. Of course it's already possible in the form of untrusted
languages (including the purpose built pl/sh), so it must not have been
such a terribly bad idea. I don't think we need to rehash the argument
about why running as root is bad, but I suppose there's always sudo for
those users who really want to shoot themselves in the foot.

Greg