Re: Integrating Replication into Core

Hi,

[ I suggest to move from hackers to replica-hooks-discuss@pgfoundry.org,  as that's what that list has been created
for.]
 

José Orlando Pereira wrote:
> Sure, I know that you don't like hooks.

Yes, but that's yet another story. ;-)

> I just suggested that we should compare *interfaces* to configure replication 
> (i.e. variable names, grammar, etc), since it looks like we have a bunch of 
> different syntaxes to achieve the same.

The same?

Let's see. I currently have these additional commands:

ALTER DATABASE testdb START REPLICATION    IN GROUP testgroup USING egcs;

and

ALTER DATABASE testdb ACCEPT REPLICATION    FROM GROUP testgroup USING egcs;


I've added a system table pg_replication_gcs to describe the different 
group communication systems and connections to them:

Table "pg_catalog.pg_replication_gcs"  Column  |  Type   | Modifiers
----------+---------+----------- rgcsname | name    | not null rgcstype | integer | not null rgcsport | integer | not
nullrgcssock | text    |
 

(Splitting into rgcsport and rgcssock prooved to be not very helpful.)

And I've added two fields to pg_database to define the GCS and the group 
in which to replicate a database:

.. datreplgcs    | oid       | not null
.. datreplgrp    | text      |


But as I said: these might change any time. And I certainly will have to 
add others, but no idea what those additions will look like.

When comparing to the Mammoth Replicator syntax that Alvaro posted, this 
seems very different. PGCluster-II does not use a GCS at all. And I 
haven't seen others.

> It is somewhat difficult to share a test-suite if we have to maintain multiple 
> versions of the code that sets up the replicated db.

Well, we wouldn't have to share test cases, but at least the *suite*. 
All the code which starts and stops postmasters, does initdb etc..

Probably that's just me, but I'm not aware of any (OSS) project which 
can emulate a network (or even a GCS), start and stop processes as 
requested and check how they react upon different inputs. If you know 
such a thing, please email me! (I've looked at STAF, but that seems 
overly complex and targeted at completely different use-case.)

> See the point? ;)

Sure, but it's wishful thinking.

> We do maintain a patch, as you do, unless you have forked from mainline for 
> good. Using a good revision control system helps (we use Cannonical's Bazaar, 
> BTW), but does not fundamentally change the problem.

I'm using monotone. And I don't need much time to fiddle with patches. A 
simple 'mtn diff -r ${TRUNK_REVISION}' does all I need. That's why I'd 
still say that I don't maintain a patch.

> The smaller the diff, the better.

I disagree. Where exactly does size of the patch matter for you?

The number you mean, which is important, is the number of points in the 
code where you need to interact with the database, i.e. the number of 
hooks you would need. Because as PostgreSQL moves along, changes at 
these points are probably necessary. But that number certainly has 
nothing to do with the patch size.

Regards

Markus