Re: proposal: hide application_name from other users

Greg,

* Greg Stark (stark@mit.edu) wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 11:56 AM, Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
> > For example, I would really like to GRANT an unpriv user access to the
> > WAL columns in pg_stat_replication so that I can monitor replication
> > delay without granting superuser permissions.
>
> So you can do this now by defining a security definer function that
> extracts precisely the information you need and grant execute access
> to precisely the users you want. There was some concern upthread about
> defining security definer functions being tricky but I'm not sure what
> conclusion to draw from that argument.

Yeah, but that sucks if you want to build a generic monitoring system
like check_postgres.pl.  Telling users to grant certain privileges may
work out, telling them to install these pl/pgsql things you write as
security-definer-to-superuser isn't going to be nearly as easy when
these users are (understandably, imv) uncomfortable having a monitor
role have superusr privs.
Thanks,
    Stephen