Re: Enhancement Request - Automatic Population of PostgreSQL application_name with Client Host Information - Mailing list pgadmin-support

From Dave Page
Subject Re: Enhancement Request - Automatic Population of PostgreSQL application_name with Client Host Information
Date
Msg-id CA+OCxox4ywH-bXwM+ZS4zqSxCS_2LrPsTU5Kw-SKYyfDGEG1wA@mail.gmail.com
Whole thread
In response to Enhancement Request - Automatic Population of PostgreSQL application_name with Client Host Information  (abhishek s <as506373@gmail.com>)
List pgadmin-support
Hi

On Wed, 5 Aug 2026 at 10:13, abhishek s <as506373@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi team,

Background 
The current PostgreSQL audit logs in Azure record are below 

Database user

Database name

Client IP (appears as the Zscaler egress IP)

Application name (currently pgAdmin4)

Problem
Because the organization uses VPN or a similar proxy, PostgreSQL only sees the proxy's IP address instead of the actual user's workstation IP.

As a result:

The Client IP is not useful for identifying who accessed the database.

The application_name is always "pgAdmin4", which is static.

Security and audit teams cannot determine:

Which workstation connected

Which employee initiated the connection

Which machine executed the SQL statements

Proposed Enhancement:
The request suggests that pgAdmin should automatically populate PostgreSQL's application_name connection parameter with client metadata when establishing the database connection.

You absolutely should NOT use application_name for security or audit purposes. It's a client-side parameter that a user can override in any way they like. Its purpose is to provide convenience when monitoring the server by identifying what a connection is being used for. That's fine for day to day monitoring with well behaved users, but you cannot rely on it for audit/security purposes as an attacker can simply override it.
 
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