On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 12:18 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote: > Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes: >> On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 11:44 AM, Peter Eisentraut >> <peter.eisentraut@2ndquadrant.com> wrote: >>> On 3/21/17 08:12, Robert Haas wrote: >>>> I think a big part of the usability problem here comes from the fact >>>> that the default database for connections is based on the username, >>>> but the default databases that get created have fixed names (postgres, >>>> template1). So the default configuration is one where you can't >>>> connect. Why the heck do we do it that way? > >>> Historical, probably. We could ponder changing the way the default >>> database is determined, but I don't want to imagine the breakage coming >>> out of that. > >> What do you think would break? > > Any configuration depending on the existing default? > > The existing behavior here dates from before we had schemas, so that > if users wanted to have private objects they *had* to use separate > databases. Nowadays a schema-per-user within one database makes a lot > more sense for many environments, and we even have the default value > for search_path set up to make that as painless as possible. Still, > it's not a solution for everybody, particularly not installations > that want to keep their users well separated. > > Perhaps we could satisfy novices by changing the out-of-the-box > behavior, but provide some way to select the old behavior for > installations that are really depending on it.
Hmm. I guess that would mean that the same connection string would mean something different depending on how you configured this behavior, which does not sound like a good idea. But why not go the other way and just create the default database by default, either in addition to or instead of the postgres database? I mean, most people probably do this:
initdb pg_ctl start createdb
I would argue that only a very small minority does that. The majority does one of:
yum install postgresql
setup-postgresql <can't remember the switch offhand, but the one that calls initdb for them>
systemctl start postgresql
or
apt-get install postgresql
(which auto-initdb's and autostarts)
or
double-clicks graphical installer on windows
(which auto-initdb's and autostarts)
I would bet each one of those have at least one and probably more than one order of magnitude more users than ever call initdb or pg_ctl manually.
