All,
I think we're failing to discuss the primary use-case for this, which
is one reason why the solutions aren't obvious.
And that use case is: multi-server management.
PostgreSQL is *easy* to manage on one server. For a single server, the
existing text file editor GUIs are clunky but good enough.
However, imagine you're adminning 250 PostgreSQL servers backing a
social networking application. You decide the application needs a
higher default sort_mem for all new connections, on all 250 servers.How, exactly, do you deploy that?
Worse, imagine you're an ISP and you have 250 *differently configured*
PostgreSQL servers on vhosts, and you need to roll out a change in
logging destination to all machines while leaving other settings
untouched.
We need a server-based tool for the manipulating postgresql.conf, and
one which is network-accessable, allows updating individual settings,
and can be plugged into 3rd-party server management tools. This goes
for pg_hba.conf as well, for the same reasons.
If we want to move PostgreSQL into larger enterprises (and I certainly
do) we need to make it more manageable.
Now, none of this requires managing the settings via the SQL command
line. Since we need to make it network-accessable, though, that seems
the easiest route. Otherwise, we'd have to set up a daemon running on
a 2nd port.
P.S. I don't care what the syntax is.
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco 415-752-2500
