Markus Wanner wrote:
>> Ideally, we'd take an outage and add the primary key. But suppose we
>> can't afford to do so?
>
> You are assuming that one doesn't need to take an outage to start
> replication in the first place. As Postgres-R comes with system catalog
> changes, that's not the case. You will at least need to restart the
> postmaster, without some sort of system catalog upgrading (which doesn't
> currently exists) you even need a full dump/restore cycle.
Hey, for Replicator I wrote a bootstrapping system for "catalog
upgrading" -- it starts a special "bootstrap mode" and allows creating
new catalogs, their indexes, and a bunch of functions. Afterwards
everything is considered "internal".
It's quite hackish but it works ...
--
Alvaro Herrera http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.