Re: max_standby_delay considered harmful

On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 1:35 AM, Heikki Linnakangas
<heikki(dot)linnakangas(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> wrote:
> Robert Haas wrote:
>> On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 11:52 PM, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:
>>> I am afraid the current setting is tempting for users to enable, but
>>> will be so unpredictable that it will tarnish the repuation of HS and
>>> Postgres.  We don't want to be thinking in 9 months, "Wow, we shouldn't
>>> have shipped that features.  It is causing all kinds of problems."  We
>>> have done that before (rarely), and it isn't a good feeling.
>>
>> I am not convinced it will be unpredictable.  The only caveats that
>> I've seen so far are:
>>
>> - You need to run ntpd.
>> - Queries will get cancelled like crazy if you're not using steaming
>> replication.
>
> And also in situations where the master is idle for a while and then
> starts doing stuff. That's the most significant source of confusion,
> IMHO, I wouldn't mind the requirement of ntpd so much.

Oh. Ouch. OK, sorry, I missed that part. Wow, that's awful. OK, I
agree: we can't ship that as-is.

/me feels embarrassed for completely failing to understand the root of
the issue until 84 emails into the thread.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise Postgres Company