Usability Challenges

From PostgreSQL wiki

This page is for tracking my (Peter Eisentraut) current R & D project on Usability Challenges in the PostgreSQL system.

• Memory management: too complex, there are few useful guidelines, most things could be automated

• Vacuum: should be automatic -- yay, autovacuum

• Background writer configuration: Who needs that?

• Write-ahead log configuration: too complicated, should be automatic

• Free-space map: The server knows full well how much FSM it needs; see also memory management.

• psql: It's great for interactive use, but try to configure it for noninteractive use with proper error checking and useful output. --- It's a mess.

• User accounts: still no good way to manage pg_hba.conf from SQL

• Statistics: too much data but most people don't know what to make of it

• Configuration files: too long, too many options that most people don't need

• Plugins: Using external modules is complicated, sometimes risky, hard to manage.

• Logging: Logging configurability is great but the default configuration is less than useful for new users.

• Tracing: Everything notwithstanding, it is still really hard at times to know what is happening, such as in nested PL/pgSQL calls, in cascaded foreign key actions, and other nested and cascaded contexts.

• Health checking: Most people cannot even tell that their system might be misconfigured. Help them.