On fre, 2012-04-27 at 22:30 +0200, Andres Freund wrote:
> In the few cases where I investigated it TMs don't use transactions
> themselves (which I think is correct, they don't need them), so
> terminating any idle session - which the TM would appear as, as its
> not using txns - would leave prepared transactions in a limbo state
> till the database is up again, instead of waiting till all prepared
> transactions are either aborted or committed. It may also choose to
> coordinate to abort all transactions, but all that is hard if the
> database shuts you out.
This would lead to another shutdown mode, one that terminates idle
sessions unless they have prepared transactions. That could be useful.