On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 7:55 PM, Merlin Moncure <mmonc...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 2:15 AM, Simon Riggs <si...@2ndquadrant.com> wrote: >> We talked about this at last year's Dev meeting. And we got >> sidetracked into "what we really want is stored procedures". Maybe we >> want that, but its a completely separate thing. Please lets not get >> distracted from a very simple thing because of the existence of other >> requirements. > > The reason why stored procedures were brought up is because they are > one way to implement an ad hoc scheduler without rewriting cron. > Another (better) way to do that would be to have the postgres expose a > heartbeat ticker that you could layer a scheduler on top of. These > are minimalist approaches with the intent of providing scaffolding > upon which robust external solutions can be built. Not having them > forces dependency on the operating system (cron) or an external daemon > like pgqd. PGQ does exactly this (over the daemon) so that the bulk > of the algorithm can be kept in SQL which is IMNSHO extremely nice. > > With a built in heartbeat you can expose a 100% SQL api that user > applications can call without having to maintain a separate process to > drive everything (although you can certainly do that if you wish). > This is exactly what PGQ (which I consider to be an absolute marvel) > does. So if you want to start small, do that -- it can be used to do > a number of interesting things that aren't really possible at the > moment. > > OTOH, if you want to implement a fully fledged out job scheduler > inside of the postmaster, then do that...it's a great solution to the > problem. But it's a little unfair to dismiss those who are saying: > "If I had stored procedures, this could get done" and conclude that > scheduling through the postmaster is the only way forward.
It's not the only way, I agree. But we do need a way forwards otherwise nothing gets done. The stored procedure route sounds attractive but its a long way off and doesn't address all of the states needs people have voiced. I'm not against doing both, I just want to do the quickest and easiest. -- Simon Riggs http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/ PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers