Thomas Lockhart writes: > So pg_location would hold the full path (absolute or logical) to every > file resource in every database? Or would it hold only a list of > allowed paths? Or only a list of resources for each database (~1 row > per database) and then table-specific info would be stored somewhere > local to the database itself? > Is a list of allowed paths really necessary? If initlocation has already been run so a directory tree with the proper structure and permissions exists there'd be no new security hole (ie, I couldn't ask the backend to create a database on any arbitrary partition; only one that's already been prepared by the administrator). I'd like to see a list of resources per database, with any table-specific info stored locally. > ALTER TABLE SET LOCATION=... > and/or > ALTER DATABASE SET LOCATION=... > should help administration and scalability. > Definitely. Of course, I'd want to make sure any new LOCATION had been prepared by the administrator. > But hard to do? If pg_location has 5000 entries, and you've scattered > tables all over the place (perhaps a bad decision, but we *should* > have the flexibility to do that) then it might be very error prone > when working with absolute paths imho. > I'd think that a pg_location entry wouldn't be necessary for the majority of tables -- the default location would be just like it is now, under the database directory. Creating a database directory in one place and scattering the tables all over creation would definitely be a Bad Decision, IMHO, but it would be doable. > Putting absolute path names as pointers to tables or data areas. I'm > getting the sense I'm in a minority (in a group of 3? ;) in this > discussion, but imho having some decoupling between logical paths in > the database and actual paths outside is A Good Thing. Always has been > a mark of good design in my experience. > How about requiring an absolute path for the data(base) area, and allowing relative paths for the tables? Actually, if you want ALTER DATABASE SET LOCATION=... to move tables, you'd either have to require relative paths for the tables or ignore tables that have absolute paths, right? Hmm. And all I originally wanted was an easier way to create a database in an alternate location :-). - Rich -- Richard Kuhns [EMAIL PROTECTED] PO Box 6249 Tel: (765)477-6000 \ 100 Sawmill Road x319 Lafayette, IN 47903 (800)489-4891 /