Re: Proposal: More structured logging

On Sat, Aug 21, 2021 at 2:37 AM Michael Paquier <michael(at)paquier(dot)xyz> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Aug 20, 2021 at 11:35:29AM +0200, Ronan Dunklau wrote:
> > Michael, your jsonlog module already fullfills this need. Is it something that
> > should be merged into our tree ?
>
> Yes, there is nothing technically preventing to have this stuff in
> core, of course, and that would even take care of the issues in
> detecting if the piping protocol should be used or not.
>
> Now, the last time this was proposed, there was a lot of drawback
> because the presence of the JSON keys increases significantly the size
> of the logs compared to CSV, and usually users care a lot about the
> size of the log files. I would support the presence of JSON format
> for the logs in core, FWIW.

As long as it's optional, I don't think that drawback holds as an
argument. The same argument could be made against the cvs logs in the
first place -- they add information to every row that a lot of people
don't need. But it's optional. Leaving it up to the administrator to
choose whether they prefer the verbose-and-easier-to-parse-maybe
format or the more compact format seems like the right path for that.
I bet quite a few would actually choose json -- easier to integrate
with other systems (because newer systems love json), and unless
you're actually logging a lot of queries (which many people don't),
the size of the logfile is often not a concern at all.

In short, I would also support the presence of JSON log format in
core. (but as a proper log_destination of course -- or if it's time to
actually split that into a separaet thing, being one parameter for
log_destination and another for log_format)

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: https://www.hagander.net/
Work: https://www.redpill-linpro.com/