Chris, Steve, Darcy,

> databases; they are consciously loosely coupled so that they can "play
> well" in environments where you get Perl provided but where you _can't_
> add extra CPAN modules. ?In particular, I am thinking of the UNIX(tm)
> systems: AIX, Solaris, HP/UX, and such. ?We're running AIX and Solaris
> in hosted environments where we don't get to install extensions, and
> Pg/DBI would be examples of extensions.

Interesting.  I was about to suggest building altperl as a CPAN module, in 
fact.  Now I can see how that might not be desirable.

I can see the desire, eventually, for 2 sets of tools: 1 in altperl which is 
loosely coupled with no dependancies other than slony, and one as a CPAN 
module that makes use of DBI, Introspector, ps and other modules.

For the cluster information file, I'd suggest some simple, human-readable, 
XML.  We don't want to get into the trap of needing additional tools just to 
eyeball the configuration file.  The structure of a cluster suits itself well 
to the nesting inherent in XML.   The drawback to this idea, of course, is 
the requirement for at least one XML module for Perl.

-- 
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco