HUP handling: a thought

[Nicolas Baradakis]

Alan DeKok wrote:

>   Yes.  There are two problems:
> 
>  1) dynamically changing data structures as they are being used
>  2) how to tell the server which data structure to change.
> 
>   (1) has to be solved before (2) becomes useful.  (2) can be done by
> any number of means.  The reason I've been leaning towards and SQL-like
> interface is because I don't want to re-invent yet another CLI.
> 
>   We can always write a simple program that translates a sane (i.e.
> humanly readable) CLI to SQL.  The utility of SQL comes in leveraging
> the large amount of tools that are ready-made to perform data manipulation.

I like when the things are simple: edit the config files with your
favorite editor, and run a command to reload the server. (kill -HUP
or something else)

I think an SQL interface would add a considerable administrative
overhead. I can easily explain to the sysadmins in my site to copy
template files to deploy new clients. Explaining to type SQL commands
seems more difficult.

Translating plain text files to SQL has a few issues issues, too. When
you update a value on a running server, its runtime config is out of
sync with its config files. Therefore I don't know how we could make
sure that the "humanly readable" version is relevant or not.

-- 
Nicolas Baradakis