BTW, one of the ideas that popped up in the unConference session on replication was "why couldn't we use a background worker as a replication agent?"
The main reason pointed out was 'because that means you have to restart the postmaster to add a replication agent.' (e.g. - like a Slony "slon" process)
There may well be other better reasons not to do so, but it would be nice to eliminate this reason. It seems seriously limiting to the bg-worker concept for them to be thus restricted.
-- When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"