Re: Whatcha' wanta have?????

When indexes, constraints, etc are disabled, still there are some operations that cannot be performed. For example, if you want to change a table to raw state, you must drop the constraints, not just disable them. It's a flipping nuisance. Since a disabled constraint or index is going to be rebuilt anyway, why not treat it as "gone" for the purposes mentioned above? On the subject of raw tables, you cannot change their schema. Catch 22 when you are trying dirty tricks to quickly administer large tables. We all know we need to take a real level zero afterwards... Similar vein: under ER, changes of schema, disabling constraints and a few other oddities are blocked or cause administration problems. Changing a table quickly without having to resyncronize is a hassle. Can't a change of schema be accommodated? If the "select *" in the replicants was treated as an expanded list of columns, then adding a column at either end shouldn't have any effect on the replication. I suppose there are housekeeping issues. Are there any scientific reasons against allowing this? Let us add a column at one end, change it later at the other end, and we'll worry about sync if the column needs it. When it doesn't, the process should be a lot lighter than it currently is. oooooh yeah - here's a must-have admin facility: add a new state that is not online, not quiescent, but which will allow SPECIFIC users to connect and do work. The list could be just informix by default, or a short list of users defined elsewhere. On some sites, if you bring the engine online to do some SQL admin, the bloody over-enthusiastic users will connect and make a mess of your administration. Related: the ability to bring up or shutdown connectors - eg we could also control administration by making all users connect via a tcp or ipc connector. Only administrators get local connectivity with shm connectors. Therefore, if we can dynamically shutdown the tcp and ipc connectors (gracefully or immediately) then we have another alternative to administration. If ER is used on the site, then perhaps ER connections could be allowed to stay running. This implies that the connectors are still listening, but they are refusing connections to most attempts.

Andrew Hamm wrote: >[...] > oooooh yeah - here's a must-have admin facility: add a new state that is not > online, not quiescent, but which will allow SPECIFIC users to connect and do > work. The list could be just informix by default, or a short list of users > defined elsewhere. On some sites, if you bring the engine online to do some > SQL admin, the bloody over-enthusiastic users will connect and make a mess > of your administration. This would be beautiful! I've also had over-enthusiastic users get in the way... forced me to show my dark side. Of course, I could have disabled their login ids (having the root password has its advantages)... or gone through some other motions with the network. But the new state that Andrew suggests would be a very nice option. -- June Hunt