Re: proposal: hide application_name from other users

From: Greg Stark <stark(at)mit(dot)edu>
To: Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net>
Cc: Harold Giménez <harold(at)heroku(dot)com>, Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com>, Mark Kirkwood <mark(dot)kirkwood(at)catalyst(dot)net(dot)nz>, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us>, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>, Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net>, Craig Ringer <craig(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>, Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnakangas(at)vmware(dot)com>, PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: proposal: hide application_name from other users
Date: 2014-01-28 15:27:52
Message-ID: CAM-w4HOYaE=WyYGPtRWOw-m4x0_g_GZosh07zHRS+Dsv+jmkRw@mail.gmail.com
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On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 2:33 AM, Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net> wrote:
>
> With that many options of "hiding" it, I would still argue for just picking
> one of those.
>
> For example, of Heroku wants to protect their customers against the
> behaviour of the pg gem, you can for example set PGAPPNAME in the
> environment. That will override what the gem sets in
> fallback_application_name, but those users that actually use it and specify
> it in their connection string, will override that default.

The problem with that is that it doesn't just hide it. It removes the
debugging information altogether. Even the administrator of the
application itself and the DBA won't have this information. The reason
the Gem is putting that information in application_name is precisely
because it's useful. In fact it was a patch from Heroku that added
that information to application_name in the first place because it's
useful.

> And all of that without removing a valuable debugging/tracing tool from
> other users.

Why is application_name useful for users who aren't the DBA and aren't
the user in question. The sql_query would probably be more useful than
application_name but we hide that...

--
greg

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