Re: Enhancement Request

Rob,

* Rob Brucks (rob.brucks@rackspace.com) wrote:
> I'd like to propose two enhancements to the PostgreSQL code, but I'm not sure if this is the correct mailing list.
Soif it's not then please let me know where I need to post this. 

This is the correct place.  I don't know why people are suggesting third
party sites, but the correct place is -general, as you've done, which is
fantastic.

> These are monitoring-centric enhancement requests since I'm trying to implement accurate monitoring in a secure
fashion.

I've been working on exactly this problem and 9.6 will (finally) have
the start of work to improve PostgreSQL in this area.  Your thoughts and
use-cases are exactly what we need to continue that effort and get to a
point where monitoring solutions can depend on PostgreSQL to provide the
features, capabilities, and information which they need, without
requiring the monitoring user to be a superuser.

> * General monitoring:
> We have a need for a "monitoring" role in PostgreSQL that has read-only access to any "pg_stat" view.  As of 9.4,
onlya super-user can read all columns of "pg_stat_activity", "pg_stat_replication", and "pg_stat_archiver" (there may
beother restricted views as well).  These views provide critical insight on how well the cluster is operating and what
isgoing on. 

That was proposed and was called 'pg_monitor'.  Unfortunately, through a
lack of support and questions about such a role possibly being "too
broad", it ended up not being included for 9.6.  I'd very much like to
work through those issues and find a solution for post-9.6 (note that we
are past the feature freeze point for 9.6, so any further changes will
be for later versions).

> * Streaming Replication Monitoring:
> Make the "pg_stat_replication" view more persistent (maybe keep the rows for 24 hours or have a registration
process?).

I believe this is improved when working with replication slots in recent
versions.

> If anyone can provide insight on how I could accomplish these in a simple manner by other means then I'm all ears!

Please continue to engage with the PostgreSQL community on these issues.
I agree that these are critical features which we really need to have
and will continue to work on them, but support from users, particularly
with detailed real-world use-caes, goes a very long way.

Thanks!

Stephen