Re: exposing pg_controldata and pg_config as functions

On 8/25/15 11:32 PM, Joe Conway wrote:
> 1.) pg_controldata() function and pg_controldata view added

I don't think dumping out whatever pg_controldata happens to print as a
bunch of text fields is very sophisticated. We have functionality to
compute with WAL positions, for example, and they won't be of much use
if this is going to be all text.

Also, the GUC settings tracked in pg_control can already be viewed using
normal mechanisms, so we don't need a second way to see them.

The fact that some of this is stored in pg_control and some is not is
really an implementation detail. We should be thinking of ways to
expose specific useful information in useful ways, not just dump out
everything we can find. Ultimately, I think we would like to move away
from people parsing textual pg_controldata output, but this proposal is
not moving very far in that direction.