On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 2:54 PM, Tom Lane <t...@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote: > Robert Haas <robertmh...@gmail.com> writes: >> On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 12:19 PM, Peter Eisentraut <pete...@gmx.net> wrote: >>> It's weird that SET LOCAL and SET SESSION actually *set* the value, and >>> the second key word determines how long the setting will last. SET >>> PERSISTENT doesn't actually set the value. I predict that this will be >>> a new favorite help-it-doesn't-work FAQ. > >> I think this is another argument against this particular syntax. I >> have always thought that something along the lines of ALTER SYSTEM >> would be more appropriate. ALTER DATABASE .. SET and ALTER ROLE .. >> SET don't change the value immediately either, and nobody gets >> confused about that to my knowledge. But I can see where SET >> PERSISTENT could cause that sort of confusion. > > Yeah, I think I argued for using the SET syntax to start with, but > I'm coming around to the position that SET PERSISTENT is too much > unlike the behavior of other varieties of SET. ALTER is sounding > more attractive to me now. Not sure about "ALTER SYSTEM" in particular > though --- it's not clear that that has any real merit other than > already existing as a keyword. (Not that that's negligible.) > ALTER CONFIGURATION is another alternative using an existing keyword > that might be worth considering.
Yeah, I thought about something like that. Aside from saving on keywords, the reason I like ALTER SYSTEM or similar is that I suspect there will be other system-wide things that we may want to let people ALTER in the future, so I think that route might avoid an unnecessary proliferation of top-level commands. I am not, however, deadly attached to the idea, if someone's got a good reason for preferring something else. -- Robert Haas EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
