Re: connection dropping continued

Hi!

> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Andreas Pflug [mailto:pgadmin@pse-consulting.de]
> Gesendet: Dienstag, 17. Februar 2004 17:40
> An: Josh Endries
> Cc: pgadmin-support@postgresql.org; Markus Wollny
> Betreff: Re: [pgadmin-support] connection dropping continued

> This is *not* an pgAdmin issue, any other app will suffer the same
> problem if crossing that firewall.

You're absolutely right insofar as this is not _caused_ by PGAdmin III;
other apps (we're using some oldish version of SQL Navigator to connect
to an Oracle 8i DB) show the exactsame behaviour.

> Your network is broken, contact your
> system administrator to fix the firewall. We're using libpq, which
> doesn't offer such keep-alive option, because it relies on
> TCP/IP which
> by definition delivers a solid connection, unless aborted
> deliberately
> by a malfunctioning firewall or router.

I wouldn't call that malfunctioning, the behaviour of the firewall is
intended and does make sense, as it would open some possibilities for
DOS-attacks if there would be no timeout.

So even though it's not caused by PGAdmin III, it could be resolved in
the application level without the need to interfere with firewalls - and
I think that there must be a lot of people who don't have sufficient
access to their firewalls or routers in order to resolve the issue
there.

I'm not saying that this is a vital feature for PGAdmin III to have, I'm
not saying that the software is crappy because the connection times out.
All I'm saying is that some sort of keep-alive-mechanism would be a
handy feature to have in PGAdmin III. And there's really no need to
establish some complicated mechanism on the network-protocol level to
get the desired results, a simple "select 1;" issued every 30 odd
seconds to all opened databases would be absolutely sufficient, I should
think. If that feature is off by default and can be switched on (and
maybe the interval adjusted according to needs), no one would be
bothered by it either.

Kind regards
Markus