Re: Removal of archive in wal_level

On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 11:45 AM, Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net> wrote:
> * Peter Eisentraut (peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net) wrote:
>> On 11/4/13, 8:58 AM, Robert Haas wrote:
>> > On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 5:57 AM, Michael Paquier
>> > <michael(dot)paquier(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>> >>> Please find attached a patch doing what is written in the $subject.
>> >> With the documentation updated, this is even better...
>> >
>> > I'm unconvinced that there's any value in this.
>>
>> Yeah, the only thing this will accomplish is to annoy people who are
>> actually using that level. It would be more interesting if we could get
>> rid of the wal_level setting altogether, but of course there are valid
>> reasons against that.
>
> It would actually be valuable to 'upgrade' those people to
> hot_standby, which is what I had kind of been hoping would happen
> eventually. I agree that there's no use for 'archive' today, but rather
> than break existing configs that use it, just make 'archive' and
> 'hot_standby' mean the same thing. In the end, I'd probably vote to
> make 'hot_standby' the 'legacy/deprecated' term anyway.

That strikes me as a better idea than what the patch actually does,
but I still think it's nanny-ism. I don't believe we have the right
to second-guess the choices our users make in this area. We can make
recommendations in the documentation, but at the end of the day if
users choose to use archive rather than hot_standby, we should respect
that choice, not break it because we think we know better.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
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