> So that raises this from an unimplemented feature to a real bug, or at
> least higher priority in my eyes. You can't do a CREATE/ALTER USER
> followed by an UPDATE on pg_shadow in a single transaction:
I'm glad I could be of some help.
I don't know if the following means anything to you (or the pgsql-odbc
folks), but in the past (I don't recall if that was postgres 7.0.3,
7.1.1 or 7.1.2) I used to get the following error message while issuing
a "BEGIN, ALTER USER ..., COMMIT" block, coming in through an ODBC
connection using VC++ 6 with the 7.01.00.05 driver:
ERROR: ALTER USER: may not be called in a transaction block
Doing a BEGIN, ALTER USER.., COMMIT (not through ODBC, through the psql
client) now on 7.1.2 *seems* to work fine though. Should I take it that
ALTER USER may indeed be used in a transaction block? I don't know if
this was actually fixed or bugfixes to this might have something to do
with the system trigger on pg_shadow, but I just thought I'll mention it
in case it rings any more bells. I'm sure you know best.
> The workaround I'd recommend to you for now is to use ALTER USER, not
> UPDATE, to perform the second step in your function.
So, how would I go about using the ALTER USER statement to clear out the
valuntil value from the pg_shadow table? If I want to set an expiration
date for the user, I can use a statement such as:
ALTER USER test VALID UNTIL '2001-07-11 10:23:23-07'
but if I want to clear the valuntil completely, how should I issue the
ALTER USER statement? I have tried (with no success) the following so
far:
ALTER USER test VALID UNTIL NULL;
ALTER USER test VALID UNTIL 'NULL';
ALTER USER test VALID UNTIL '';
Me failing to use the "ALTER USER" command successfully caused be to use
the "UPDATE pg_shadow" instead.
Thanks,
-Kristis