Re: Can we have time based triggers in Postgresql??

My thoughts in a perfect world for having oracle style jobs in postgresql
would be a very loud yes.  In the world called reality I say why waste
precious time on something that can already be accomplished by other means.
This feature at this time would just be icing on an already tasty cake.
This is not putting down anyone's ideas on getting these this is just my
personal thought at this point in time.  If it would be easy for the c
guru's to do ,great put it in there.  But if it will pull away from more
critical areas why do it.



|---------+---------------------------------->
|         |           "Guy Rouillier"        |
|         |           <guyr@masergy.com>     |
|         |           Sent by:               |
|         |           pgsql-general-owner@pos|
|         |           tgresql.org            |
|         |                                  |
|         |                                  |
|         |           04/07/2004 05:00 PM    |
|         |                                  |
|---------+---------------------------------->

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  |
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  |       To:       "PostgreSQL General" <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
        | 
  |       cc:
        | 
  |       Subject:  Re: [GENERAL] Can we have time based triggers in Postgresql??
        | 

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Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 30, 2004 at 12:16:50PM -0500, Steve Manes wrote:
>> I think he probably means like an Oracle job.  Although cron works,
>> that would be handy so you wouldn't need to write wrapper scripts
>> just to run a proc.
>
> I hate to sound like an oldbie crank (although I'll admit to being a
> crank), but what exactly is the advantage supposed to be here?  One
> invents a new special bit of database code which exists just so
> people don't have to write shell scripts?  I guess the idea gets
> under my skin just because I have enough time-based problems without
> inventing a new interface to make it more complicated.  Hmm.  Looks
> like the sigmonster has gacked up a piece of wisdom.
>
> A

As one who was about to ask the same question, I can provide one reason:
ease of use/administration.  I can create everything I need to
manage/process my database *in* my database, rather than in numerous
shell scripts scattered about.  I had a weird issue with cron recently.
I needed to do some db maintenance and wanted to make sure no one was
going to change it, so I removed all cron jobs (crontab -r).  Halfway
through, suddenly the database started getting updated!!  I finally
figured out that my predecessors, for some reason, had stuck a couple
cron jobs in the root crontab, which I corrected.  And of course, if I
copy a database someplace, the jobs would go with it; not so cron jobs.

Now having said this, I realize that even if a scheduler was added to
PostgreSQL, there is nothing to stop someone from additionally using
cron jobs anyway.  But there would be less temptation to do so.

--
Guy Rouillier


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