Setting configuration parameters in your programs

PostgreSQL allows you to override some parameter settings for each session or transaction using SQL commands. Here are some examples of parameters that are designed to be user-modifiable:

• application_name—to help identify the session for monitoring
• synchronous_commit—to set the level of durability desired
• Various timeouts and check intervals:
  • client_connection_check_interval
  • idle_on_transaction_session_timeout
  • idle_session_timeout
  • lock_timeout
  • statement_timeout
• Client-tuning parameters:
  • commit_siblings
  • cursor_tuple_fraction
  • maintenance_work_mem
  • vacuum_cost_delay
  • work_mem
• Data type-specific settings:
  • bytea_output
  • DateStyle
  • xmlbinary
  • xmloption
• Optimization settings (too many to list, but not normally changed)

How to do it…

Execute the following steps to set custom parameters:

1. You can change the value of a setting during your session, like this:

   SET work_mem = '16MB&apos...