Re: creative work-arounds to obtain auto_explain's benefits for non-superuser

On Thu, Feb 13, 2020 at 4:46 PM Jacque <jacqueedmund(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> I gotta admit. The logging of auto_explain is an embarrassment of riches.
>
>
> But most operational work is not done under the superuser role but one
> with the lowest opportunity risk of compromise. I'd like to be
> embarrassed by an operator role. Any Mcgeyors out there with ideas to
> be thus embarrased?
>

What problem you are trying to solve? auto_explain needs to be set up by a
superuser, but once that is done it functions for anyone. The problem would
be getting at the logs to see what is in them, and I don't see how your
proposal helps that at all. The client could set client_min_messages=LOG
so that it can see its own log messages (including the ones generated by
auto_explain), but the client is rarely prepared to do anything with those
messages in real time. You could configure the client to save such
messages to a client-side log for future analysis by the non-superuser who
has access to them.

Honestly, the only solution I've come up with is to duplicate every
> non-superuser SQL object in a superuser-ONLY schema and have the super
> user perform the same SQL as the operator role (perhaps on alternate
> days).

If you want to manually run queries just to see the plans (not because you
need the results of the query), why not just run them with EXPLAIN
(ANALYZE, BUFFERS) or whatever settings you want? The point of
auto_explain is that it works with queries that are being run organically.

Cheers,

Jeff