Re: EMBEDDED PostgreSQL

On Jan 25, 2005, at 1:55 PM, Christopher Browne wrote:

> I haven't the foggiest idea what you can do on Windows 8.0; I thought
> they called it Windows XP or Windows 2000.

Sorry, I meant version 8.0 of PostgreSQL on Windows (any variant it
works on).

>
> I'm making the Unix-flavoured assumptions that it's cheap and easy to
> create an extra directory and to spawn an extra process for a
> postmaster in a user's own process space.
>
> That may vary somewhat for the more VMS-like model of Windows NT...

In general, it should be possible to just copy the right files and do
the same thing on Windows but the pgInstaller FAQ says

==
2.3) Why do I need a non-administrator account to run PostgreSQL under?

When a hacker gains entry to a computer using a software bug in a
package, she gains the permissions of the user account under which the
service is run. Whilst we do not know of any such bugs in PostgreSQL,
we enforce the use of a non-administrative service account to minimise
the possible damage that a hacker could do should they find and utilise
a bug in PostgreSQL to hack the system.

This has long been common practice in the Unix world, and is starting
to become standard practice in the Windows world as well as Microsoft
and other vendors work to improve the security of their systems.
==

Again, I think this is fine as the default, but it would be nice if it
could be changed with a setting (rather than recompiling the source).
Not all Windows users are dummies about security and need PostgreSQL to
enforce security measures beyond those implemented on other platforms.

John DeSoi, Ph.D.
http://pgedit.com/
Power Tools for PostgreSQL