Re: Listen / Notify rewrite - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Andrew Chernow
Subject Re: Listen / Notify rewrite
Date
Msg-id 4AFC3C22.5020603@esilo.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Listen / Notify rewrite  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
List pgsql-hackers
> Now you might say that yeah, that's the point, we're trying to enable
> using NOTIFY in a different style.  The problem is that if you are
> trying to use NOTIFY as a queue, you will soon realize that it has
> the wrong semantics for that --- in particular, losing notifies across
> a system crash or client crash is OK for a condition notification,
> not so OK for a message queue.  The difference is that the former style
> assumes that the authoritative data is in a table somewhere, so you can
> still find out what you need to know after reconnecting.  If you are
> doing messaging you are likely to think that you don't need any backing
> store for the system state.
> 

I simply don't agree that the semantics have to change.  You call it a 
queue, I call it sesison data.  There is no reason why the documentation 
can't state that notifies may not be delivered due to crashes, so make 
sure to use persistent storage for any payload worth keeping post-session.

-- 
Andrew Chernow
eSilo, LLC
every bit counts
http://www.esilo.com/


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