Re: primary/secondary/master/slave/standby

On 27/05/10 12:39, Dimitri Fontaine wrote:
> Greg Stark<gsstark(at)mit(dot)edu> writes:
>> Fwiw I like the word "replica" but I don't see an obvious choice of
>> word to pair it with
>
> I guess it's replica / origin, per choice of Jan Wieck to be found in
> our catalogs:
>
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/catalog-pg-trigger.html
>
> tgenabled char
>
> Controls in which session_replication_role modes the trigger fires.
> O = trigger fires in "origin" and "local" modes, D = trigger is
> disabled, R = trigger fires in "replica" mode, A = trigger fires
> always.
>
> So that's origin/replica, master/slave, primary/standby, master/standby.

master/standby is my favourite, and I believe we have a rough consensus
on that.

I started to search/replace primary -> master, but started to have
second thoughts when I got to the section in the docs about standby servers:

http://developer.postgresql.org/pgdocs/postgres/warm-standby.html

Somehow that just doesn't sound as good after s/primary/master, the
first sentence in particular. I think the reason is that "master" brings
to mind an active connection between the master and standby, while
"primary" sounds more loosely-coupled.

Perhaps we should use master/standby when discussing streaming
replication, and primary/standby when talking about a standby setup in
general, possibly using file-based log shipping. The distinction is
quite vague, so we'll have to document both terms as synonyms of each other.

Thoughts?

--
Heikki Linnakangas
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com