What does log_destination = csvlog mean?

Bruce Momjian wrote:

In reading through our documentation, I am unclear how "log_destination
= csvlog" works. It seems to me that 'cvslog' is a format-output type,
not a real destination, or rather it is a special output format for
stderr. Is this accurate? I would like to clarify our documentation.

CSV logs can in fact only be delivered via redirected stderr, i.e.
csvlog requires that logging_collector be on. So in a sense it's both a
format and a destination.

There is a strong technical reason for that, namely that only by doing
that can be be sure that CSV logs won't get lines multiplexed, which
would make loading them back into a table impossible. We invented a
whole (simple) protocol between the backends and the syslogger just to
handle that.

cheers

andrew

Andrew Dunstan wrote:

Bruce Momjian wrote:

In reading through our documentation, I am unclear how "log_destination
= csvlog" works. It seems to me that 'cvslog' is a format-output type,
not a real destination, or rather it is a special output format for
stderr. Is this accurate? I would like to clarify our documentation.

CSV logs can in fact only be delivered via redirected stderr, i.e.
csvlog requires that logging_collector be on. So in a sense it's both a
format and a destination.

There is a strong technical reason for that, namely that only by doing
that can be be sure that CSV logs won't get lines multiplexed, which
would make loading them back into a table impossible. We invented a
whole (simple) protocol between the backends and the syslogger just to
handle that.

That's what I thought; thanks.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

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