No. Just the implementation of watchdog has been changed (more precisely new life check mode added). In recent versions (since 3.3) it uses UDP packet for life check of pgpool, which is pretty much similar to heartbeat.
Thanks for adding the details.
> If you are up for a commercial product, you may want to consider using > something like EnterpriseDB's failover manager.
Commercial support for pgpool-II is provided by the way.
Noted :)
Best Regards,
Sameer Kumar | Database Consultant
ASHNIK PTE. LTD.
101 Cecil Street, #11-11 Tong Eng Building, Singapore 069533