On Wed, 2009-09-16 at 21:48 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Yeah, I was just wondering about that myself. Seems like there would
> be lots of situations where short exclusive-lock intervals could be
> tolerated, even though not long ones.
But a short-lived exclusive lock can turn into a long-lived exclusive
lock if there are long-lived transactions ahead of it in the queue. We
probably don't want to automate anything by default that acquires
exclusive locks, even for a short time. However, I agree that it's fine
in many situations if the administrator is choosing it.
Regards,Jeff Davis