Re: Recognizing superuser in pg_hba.conf

Stephen Frost <[email protected]> Thu, 9 Jan 2020 10:17:18 -0500

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.db.postgresql.devel.general
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Greetings,

* Tom Lane ([email protected]) wrote:
> What I'm basically objecting to is the pseudo-reservedness.  If we
> don't want to dodge that with special syntax, we should dodge it
> by making sure the keywords are actually reserved names.  In other
> words, add a "pg_" prefix, as somebody else suggested upthread.

Yes, that was my suggestion, and it was also my change a few major
versions ago that actually reserved the "pg_" prefix for roles.

> BTW, although that solution works for the immediate need of
> keywords that have to be distinguished from role names, it doesn't
> currently scale to keywords for the database column, because we
> don't treat "pg_" as a reserved prefix for database names:
> 
> regression=# create role pg_zit;
> ERROR:  role name "pg_zit" is reserved
> DETAIL:  Role names starting with "pg_" are reserved.
> regression=# create database pg_zit;
> CREATE DATABASE
> 
> Should we do so, or wait till there's an immediate need to?

I seem to recall (but it was years ago, so I might be wrong) advocating
that we should reserve the 'pg_' prefix for *all* object types.  All I
can recall is that there wasn't much backing for the idea (though I also
don't recall any specific objection, and it's also quite possible that
there was simply no response to the idea).

For my 2c, I'd *much* rather we reserve it across the board, and sooner
than later, since that would hopefully reduce the impact on people.  The
only justification for *not* reserving it is if we KNOW that we'll never
need a special one of those, but, well, we're well past that for
database names already- look at the fact that we've got a "replication"
one, for example.  Maybe we can't ever un-reserve that, but I like the
idea of reserving "pg_" for database names and then having
"pg_replication" be allowed to mean replication connections and then
encouraging users to use that instead.

Thanks,

Stephen

signature.asc (application/pgp-signature, 819 B)