Re: primary/secondary/master/slave/standby

On 27/05/10 12:39, Dimitri Fontaine wrote:
> Greg Stark<gsstark@mit.edu>  writes:
>> Fwiw I like the word "replica" but I don't see an obvious choice of
>> word to pair it with
>
> I guess it's replica / origin, per choice of Jan Wieck to be found in
> our catalogs:
>
>   http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/catalog-pg-trigger.html
>
>    tgenabled    char         
>
>    Controls in which session_replication_role modes the trigger fires.
>    O = trigger fires in "origin" and "local" modes, D = trigger is
>    disabled, R = trigger fires in "replica" mode, A = trigger fires
>    always.
>
> So that's origin/replica, master/slave, primary/standby, master/standby.

master/standby is my favourite, and I believe we have a rough consensus 
on that.

I started to search/replace primary -> master, but started to have 
second thoughts when I got to the section in the docs about standby servers:

http://developer.postgresql.org/pgdocs/postgres/warm-standby.html

Somehow that just doesn't sound as good after s/primary/master, the 
first sentence in particular. I think the reason is that "master" brings 
to mind an active connection between the master and standby, while 
"primary" sounds more loosely-coupled.

Perhaps we should use master/standby when discussing streaming 
replication, and primary/standby when talking about a standby setup in 
general, possibly using file-based log shipping. The distinction is 
quite vague, so we'll have to document both terms as synonyms of each other.

Thoughts?

--   Heikki Linnakangas  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com