Re: nomenclature

Hi Lee

On Jan 16, 2004, at 8:09 PM, Lee Kindness wrote:
> With the various paths, service names, config files and environment
> variables PostgreSQL appears to have a multiple-personality
> disorder... Is it:
>
> postgresql (/etc/init.d/postgresql, postgresql.conf),
> or postmaster (main postmaster process),
> or postgres (postgres user),
> or pgsql (/var/lib/pgsql),
> or psql (psql SQL terminal),
> or pg (PG* environment variables, pg_* files)?
>
> I guess the point of this email is to point out the current
> proliferation of terms is not user friendly. Any plans/interest in
> standardisation?

Don't forget pl/pgsql! :)

In my way of thinking, different things should have different names,
which is what is going on here. Two of these are more or less
user-customizable: the user who owns the database cluster, and the
directory where the cluster and files are usually stored. However, the
others are distinct, as you've clearly pointed out. They have different
names because they are different.

I too was a little confused when starting out with PostgreSQL as to
what the difference was between some of these things, but they need
different names so people can distinguish between them.

However, this is compounded by the fact that I see (and have probably
used) PostgreSQL, postgres, or pgsql all to refer to the whole thing in
general. Then you've got people coming up with their own, such as
Postgress, and Postgrees, two of which I've seen bandied about
recently. But again, there needs to be names to refer to these
different things.

Michael Glaesemann
grzm myrealbox com