Re: Configuring synchronous replication - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

<br /><br /> On 09/22/2010 04:18 AM, Heikki Linnakangas wrote: <blockquote cite="mid:4C99BBED.1030109@enterprisedb.com"
type="cite">On21/09/10 18:12, Tom Lane wrote: <br /><blockquote type="cite">Heikki Linnakangas<a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com"><heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com></a> writes: <br
/><blockquotetype="cite">On 21/09/10 11:52, Thom Brown wrote: <br /><blockquote type="cite">My fear would be
standby.confwould be edited by users who don't <br /> really know XML and then we'd have 3 different styles of config
to<br /> tell the user to edit. <br /></blockquote></blockquote><br /><blockquote type="cite">I'm not a big fan of XML
either.<br /> ... <br /> Then again, maybe we should go with something like json or yaml <br /></blockquote><br /> The
fundamentalproblem with all those "machine editable" formats is <br /> that they aren't "people editable".  If you have
tohave a tool (other <br /> than a text editor) to change a config file, you're going to be very <br /> unhappy when
thingsare broken at 3AM and you're trying to fix it <br /> while ssh'd in from your phone. <br /></blockquote><br />
I'mnot very familiar with any of those formats, but I agree it needs to be easy to edit by hand first and foremost. <br
/><br/><blockquote type="cite">I think the "ini file" format suggestion is probably a good one; it <br /> seems to fit
thisproblem, and it's something that people are used to. <br /> We could probably shoehorn the info into a pg_hba-like
format,but <br /> I'm concerned about whether we'd be pushing that format beyond what <br /> it can reasonably handle.
<br/></blockquote><br /> The ini file format seems to be enough for the features proposed this far, but I'm a bit
concernedthat even that might not be flexible enough for future features. I guess we'll cross the bridge when we get
thereand go with an ini file for now. It should be possible to extend it in various ways, and in the worst case that we
haveto change to a completely different format, we can provide a how to guide on converting existing config files to
thenew format. <br /></blockquote><br /> The ini file format is not flexible enough, IMNSHO. If we're going to adopt a
newconfig file format it should have these characteristics, among others:<br /><ul><li>well known (let's not invent a
newone)<li>supports hierarchical structure<li>reasonably readable</ul> I realize that the last is very subjective.
Personally,I'm very comfortable with XML, but then I do a *lot* of work with it, and have for many years. I know I'm in
aminority on that, and some people just go bananas when they see it. Since we're just about to add a JSON parser to the
backend,by the look of it, that looks like a reasonable bet. Maybe it uses a few too many quotes, but that's not really
sohard to get your head around, even if it offends you a bit aesthetically. And it is certainly fairly widely known.<br
/><br/> cheers<br /><br /> andrew<br />