"David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> writes:
> As an aside the alter user/database commands do end up requiring the user
> to disconnect and reconnect. Is there a hard limitation why an
> administrator can't send some kind of signal to cause a re-read of those by
> an active session?
If we wanted to redefine their behavior, we could probably make that
happen, though it's not clear we want to. For example, if you've done
SET ROLE, should a reload of ALTER USER values pertaining to your
original role affect you?
Another interesting point is that the config file re-read behavior will
currently happen at next command receipt, even if you are inside an
aborted transaction. We cannot read the system catalogs if the current
transaction is aborted, so the timing would have to be subtly different
in any case.
regards, tom lane