<!--
doc/src/sgml/ref/create_subscription.sgml
PostgreSQL documentation
-->

<refentry id="sql-createsubscription">
 <indexterm zone="sql-createsubscription">
  <primary>CREATE SUBSCRIPTION</primary>
 </indexterm>

 <refmeta>
  <refentrytitle>CREATE SUBSCRIPTION</refentrytitle>
  <manvolnum>7</manvolnum>
  <refmiscinfo>SQL - Language Statements</refmiscinfo>
 </refmeta>

 <refnamediv>
  <refname>CREATE SUBSCRIPTION</refname>
  <refpurpose>define a new subscription</refpurpose>
 </refnamediv>

 <refsynopsisdiv>
<synopsis>
CREATE SUBSCRIPTION <replaceable class="parameter">subscription_name</replaceable>
    CONNECTION '<replaceable class="parameter">conninfo</replaceable>'
    PUBLICATION <replaceable class="parameter">publication_name</replaceable> [, ...]
    [ WITH ( <replaceable class="parameter">subscription_parameter</replaceable> [= <replaceable class="parameter">value</replaceable>] [, ... ] ) ]
</synopsis>
 </refsynopsisdiv>

 <refsect1>
  <title>Description</title>

  <para>
   <command>CREATE SUBSCRIPTION</command> adds a new logical-replication
   subscription.  The user that creates a subscription becomes the owner
   of the subscription. The subscription name must be distinct from the name of
   any existing subscription in the current database.
  </para>

  <para>
   A subscription represents a replication connection to the publisher.
   Hence, in addition to adding definitions in the local catalogs, this
   command normally creates a replication slot on the publisher.
  </para>

  <para>
   A logical replication worker will be started to replicate data for the new
   subscription at the commit of the transaction where this command is run,
   unless the subscription is initially disabled.
  </para>

  <para>
   To be able to create a subscription, you must have the privileges of the
   the <literal>pg_create_subscription</literal> role, as well as
   <literal>CREATE</literal> privileges on the current database.
  </para>

  <para>
   Additional information about subscriptions and logical replication as a
   whole is available at <xref linkend="logical-replication-subscription"/> and
   <xref linkend="logical-replication"/>.
  </para>

 </refsect1>

 <refsect1>
  <title>Parameters</title>

  <variablelist>
   <varlistentry id="sql-createsubscription-name">
    <term><replaceable class="parameter">subscription_name</replaceable></term>
    <listitem>
     <para>
      The name of the new subscription.
     </para>
    </listitem>
   </varlistentry>

   <varlistentry id="sql-createsubscription-connection">
    <term><literal>CONNECTION '<replaceable class="parameter">conninfo</replaceable>'</literal></term>
    <listitem>
     <para>
      The <application>libpq</application> connection string defining how
      to connect to the publisher database.  For details see
      <xref linkend="libpq-connstring"/>.
     </para>
    </listitem>
   </varlistentry>

   <varlistentry id="sql-createsubscription-publication">
    <term><literal>PUBLICATION <replaceable class="parameter">publication_name</replaceable> [, ...]</literal></term>
    <listitem>
     <para>
      Names of the publications on the publisher to subscribe to.
     </para>
    </listitem>
   </varlistentry>

   <varlistentry id="sql-createsubscription-with">
    <term><literal>WITH ( <replaceable class="parameter">subscription_parameter</replaceable> [= <replaceable class="parameter">value</replaceable>] [, ... ] )</literal></term>
    <listitem>
     <para>
      This clause specifies optional parameters for a subscription.
     </para>

     <para>
      The following parameters control what happens during subscription creation:

      <variablelist>

       <varlistentry id="sql-createsubscription-with-connect">
        <term><literal>connect</literal> (<type>boolean</type>)</term>
        <listitem>
         <para>
          Specifies whether the <command>CREATE SUBSCRIPTION</command>
          command should connect to the publisher at all.  The default
          is <literal>true</literal>.  Setting this to
          <literal>false</literal> will force the values of
          <literal>create_slot</literal>, <literal>enabled</literal> and
          <literal>copy_data</literal> to <literal>false</literal>.
          (You cannot combine setting <literal>connect</literal>
          to <literal>false</literal> with
          setting <literal>create_slot</literal>, <literal>enabled</literal>,
          or <literal>copy_data</literal> to <literal>true</literal>.)
         </para>

         <para>
          Since no connection is made when this option is
          <literal>false</literal>, no tables are subscribed. To initiate
          replication, you must manually create the replication slot, enable
          the subscription, and refresh the subscription. See
          <xref linkend="logical-replication-subscription-examples-deferred-slot"/>
          for examples.
         </para>
        </listitem>
       </varlistentry>

       <varlistentry id="sql-createsubscription-with-create-slot">
        <term><literal>create_slot</literal> (<type>boolean</type>)</term>
        <listitem>
         <para>
          Specifies whether the command should create the replication slot on
          the publisher.  The default is <literal>true</literal>.
         </para>
         <para>
          If set to <literal>false</literal>, you are responsible for
          creating the publisher's slot in some other way. See
          <xref linkend="logical-replication-subscription-examples-deferred-slot"/>
          for examples.
         </para>
        </listitem>
       </varlistentry>

       <varlistentry id="sql-createsubscription-with-enabled">
        <term><literal>enabled</literal> (<type>boolean</type>)</term>
        <listitem>
         <para>
          Specifies whether the subscription should be actively replicating
          or whether it should just be set up but not started yet.  The default
          is <literal>true</literal>.
         </para>
        </listitem>
       </varlistentry>

       <varlistentry id="sql-createsubscription-with-slot-name">
        <term><literal>slot_name</literal> (<type>string</type>)</term>
        <listitem>
         <para>
          Name of the publisher's replication slot to use.  The default is
          to use the name of the subscription for the slot name.
         </para>

         <para>
          Setting <literal>slot_name</literal> to <literal>NONE</literal>
          means there will be no replication slot associated with the
          subscription. Such subscriptions must also have both
          <literal>enabled</literal> and <literal>create_slot</literal> set to
          <literal>false</literal>.  Use this when you will be creating the
          replication slot later manually. See
          <xref linkend="logical-replication-subscription-examples-deferred-slot"/>
          for examples.
         </para>
        </listitem>
       </varlistentry>
      </variablelist>
     </para>

     <para>
      The following parameters control the subscription's replication
      behavior after it has been created:

      <variablelist>

       <varlistentry id="sql-createsubscription-with-binary">
        <term><literal>binary</literal> (<type>boolean</type>)</term>
        <listitem>
         <para>
          Specifies whether the subscription will request the publisher to send
          the data in binary format (as opposed to text). The default is
          <literal>false</literal>. Any initial table synchronization copy
          (see <literal>copy_data</literal>) also uses the same format. Binary
          format can be faster than the text format, but it is less portable
          across machine architectures and <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>
          versions. Binary format is very data type specific; for example, it
          will not allow copying from a <type>smallint</type> column to an
          <type>integer</type> column, even though that would work fine in text
          format. Even when this option is enabled, only data types having binary
          send and receive functions will be transferred in binary. Note that
          the initial synchronization requires all data types to have binary
          send and receive functions, otherwise the synchronization will fail
          (see <xref linkend="sql-createtype"/> for more about send/receive
          functions).
         </para>

         <para>
          When doing cross-version replication, it could be that the
          publisher has a binary send function for some data type, but the
          subscriber lacks a binary receive function for that type.  In
          such a case, data transfer will fail, and
          the <literal>binary</literal> option cannot be used.
         </para>

         <para>
          If the publisher is a <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> version
          before 16, then any initial table synchronization will use text format
          even if <literal>binary = true</literal>.
         </para>
        </listitem>
       </varlistentry>

       <varlistentry id="sql-createsubscription-with-copy-data">
        <term><literal>copy_data</literal> (<type>boolean</type>)</term>
        <listitem>
         <para>
          Specifies whether to copy pre-existing data in the publications
          that are being subscribed to when the replication starts.
          The default is <literal>true</literal>.
         </para>
         <para>
          If the publications contain <literal>WHERE</literal> clauses, it
          will affect what data is copied. Refer to the
          <xref linkend="sql-createsubscription-notes" /> for details.
         </para>
         <para>
          See <xref linkend="sql-createsubscription-notes"/> for details of how
          <literal>copy_data = true</literal> can interact with the
          <literal>origin</literal> parameter.
         </para>
        </listitem>
       </varlistentry>

       <varlistentry id="sql-createsubscription-with-streaming">
        <term><literal>streaming</literal> (<type>enum</type>)</term>
        <listitem>
         <para>
          Specifies whether to enable streaming of in-progress transactions
          for this subscription.  The default value is <literal>off</literal>,
          meaning all transactions are fully decoded on the publisher and only
          then sent to the subscriber as a whole.
         </para>

         <para>
          If set to <literal>on</literal>, the incoming changes are written to
          temporary files and then applied only after the transaction is
          committed on the publisher and received by the subscriber.
         </para>

         <para>
          If set to <literal>parallel</literal>, incoming changes are directly
          applied via one of the parallel apply workers, if available. If no
          parallel apply worker is free to handle streaming transactions then
          the changes are written to temporary files and applied after the
          transaction is committed. Note that if an error happens in a
          parallel apply worker, the finish LSN of the remote transaction
          might not be reported in the server log.
         </para>
        </listitem>
       </varlistentry>

       <varlistentry id="sql-createsubscription-with-synchronous-commit">
        <term><literal>synchronous_commit</literal> (<type>enum</type>)</term>
        <listitem>
         <para>
          The value of this parameter overrides the
          <xref linkend="guc-synchronous-commit"/> setting within this
          subscription's apply worker processes.  The default value
          is <literal>off</literal>.
         </para>

         <para>
          It is safe to use <literal>off</literal> for logical replication:
          If the subscriber loses transactions because of missing
          synchronization, the data will be sent again from the publisher.
         </para>

         <para>
          A different setting might be appropriate when doing synchronous
          logical replication.  The logical replication workers report the
          positions of writes and flushes to the publisher, and when using
          synchronous replication, the publisher will wait for the actual
          flush.  This means that setting
          <literal>synchronous_commit</literal> for the subscriber to
          <literal>off</literal> when the subscription is used for
          synchronous replication might increase the latency for
          <command>COMMIT</command> on the publisher.  In this scenario, it
          can be advantageous to set <literal>synchronous_commit</literal>
          to <literal>local</literal> or higher.
         </para>
        </listitem>
       </varlistentry>

       <varlistentry id="sql-createsubscription-with-two-phase">
        <term><literal>two_phase</literal> (<type>boolean</type>)</term>
        <listitem>
         <para>
          Specifies whether two-phase commit is enabled for this subscription.
          The default is <literal>false</literal>.
         </para>

         <para>
          When two-phase commit is enabled, prepared transactions are sent
          to the subscriber at the time of <command>PREPARE
          TRANSACTION</command>, and are processed as two-phase
          transactions on the subscriber too.  Otherwise, prepared
          transactions are sent to the subscriber only when committed, and
          are then processed immediately by the subscriber.
         </para>

         <para>
          The implementation of two-phase commit requires that replication
          has successfully finished the initial table synchronization
          phase. So even when <literal>two_phase</literal> is enabled for a
          subscription, the internal two-phase state remains
          temporarily <quote>pending</quote> until the initialization phase
          completes. See column <structfield>subtwophasestate</structfield>
          of <link linkend="catalog-pg-subscription"><structname>pg_subscription</structname></link>
          to know the actual two-phase state.
         </para>

        </listitem>
       </varlistentry>

       <varlistentry id="sql-createsubscription-with-disable-on-error">
        <term><literal>disable_on_error</literal> (<type>boolean</type>)</term>
        <listitem>
         <para>
          Specifies whether the subscription should be automatically disabled
          if any errors are detected by subscription workers during data
          replication from the publisher. The default is
          <literal>false</literal>.
         </para>
        </listitem>
       </varlistentry>

       <varlistentry id="sql-createsubscription-with-password-required">
        <term><literal>password_required</literal> (<type>boolean</type>)</term>
        <listitem>
         <para>
          Specifies whether connections to the publisher made as a result
          of this subscription must use password authentication. This setting
          is ignored when the subscription is owned by a superuser.
          The default is <literal>true</literal>. Only superusers can set
          this value to <literal>false</literal>.
         </para>
        </listitem>
       </varlistentry>

       <varlistentry id="sql-createsubscription-with-run-as-owner">
        <term><literal>run_as_owner</literal> (<type>boolean</type>)</term>
        <listitem>
         <para>
          If true, all replication actions are performed as the subscription
          owner. If false, replication workers will perform actions on each
          table as the owner of that table. The latter configuration is
          generally much more secure; for details, see
          <xref linkend="logical-replication-security" />.
          The default is <literal>false</literal>.
         </para>
        </listitem>
       </varlistentry>

       <varlistentry id="sql-createsubscription-with-origin">
        <term><literal>origin</literal> (<type>string</type>)</term>
        <listitem>
         <para>
          Specifies whether the subscription will request the publisher to only
          send changes that don't have an origin or send changes regardless of
          origin. Setting <literal>origin</literal> to <literal>none</literal>
          means that the subscription will request the publisher to only send
          changes that don't have an origin. Setting <literal>origin</literal>
          to <literal>any</literal> means that the publisher sends changes
          regardless of their origin. The default is <literal>any</literal>.
         </para>
         <para>
          See <xref linkend="sql-createsubscription-notes"/> for details of how
          <literal>copy_data = true</literal> can interact with the
          <literal>origin</literal> parameter.
         </para>
        </listitem>
       </varlistentry>
      </variablelist></para>

    </listitem>
   </varlistentry>
  </variablelist>

  <para>
   When specifying a parameter of type <type>boolean</type>, the
   <literal>=</literal> <replaceable class="parameter">value</replaceable>
   part can be omitted, which is equivalent to
   specifying <literal>TRUE</literal>.
  </para>
 </refsect1>

 <refsect1 id="sql-createsubscription-notes" xreflabel="Notes">
  <title>Notes</title>

  <para>
   See <xref linkend="logical-replication-security"/> for details on
   how to configure access control between the subscription and the
   publication instance.
  </para>

  <para>
   When creating a replication slot (the default behavior), <command>CREATE
   SUBSCRIPTION</command> cannot be executed inside a transaction block.
  </para>

  <para>
   Creating a subscription that connects to the same database cluster (for
   example, to replicate between databases in the same cluster or to replicate
   within the same database) will only succeed if the replication slot is not
   created as part of the same command.  Otherwise, the <command>CREATE
   SUBSCRIPTION</command> call will hang.  To make this work, create the
   replication slot separately (using the
   function <function>pg_create_logical_replication_slot</function> with the
   plugin name <literal>pgoutput</literal>) and create the subscription using
   the parameter <literal>create_slot = false</literal>.  See
   <xref linkend="logical-replication-subscription-examples-deferred-slot"/>
   for examples. This is an implementation restriction that might be lifted in a
   future release.
  </para>

  <para>
   If any table in the publication has a <literal>WHERE</literal> clause, rows
   for which the <replaceable class="parameter">expression</replaceable>
   evaluates to false or null will not be published. If the subscription has
   several publications in which the same table has been published with
   different <literal>WHERE</literal> clauses, a row will be published if any
   of the expressions (referring to that publish operation) are satisfied. In
   the case of different <literal>WHERE</literal> clauses, if one of the
   publications has no <literal>WHERE</literal> clause (referring to that
   publish operation) or the publication is declared as
   <link linkend="sql-createpublication-for-all-tables"><literal>FOR ALL TABLES</literal></link>
   or <link linkend="sql-createpublication-for-tables-in-schema"><literal>FOR TABLES IN SCHEMA</literal></link>,
   rows are always published regardless of the definition of the other
   expressions. If the subscriber is a <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>
   version before 15, then any row filtering is ignored during the initial data
   synchronization phase. For this case, the user might want to consider
   deleting any initially copied data that would be incompatible with
   subsequent filtering. Because initial data synchronization does not take
   into account the publication
   <link linkend="sql-createpublication-with-publish"><literal>publish</literal></link>
   parameter when copying existing table data, some rows may be copied that
   would not be replicated using DML. See
   <xref linkend="logical-replication-subscription-examples"/> for examples.
  </para>

  <para>
   Subscriptions having several publications in which the same table has been
   published with different column lists are not supported.
  </para>

  <para>
   We allow non-existent publications to be specified so that users can add
   those later. This means
   <link linkend="catalog-pg-subscription"><structname>pg_subscription</structname></link>
   can have non-existent publications.
  </para>

  <para>
   When using a subscription parameter combination of
   <literal>copy_data = true</literal> and <literal>origin = NONE</literal>,
   the initial sync table data is copied directly from the publisher, meaning
   that knowledge of the true origin of that data is not possible. If the
   publisher also has subscriptions then the copied table data might have
   originated from further upstream. This scenario is detected and a WARNING is
   logged to the user, but the warning is only an indication of a potential
   problem; it is the user's responsibility to make the necessary checks to
   ensure the copied data origins are really as wanted or not.
  </para>

  <para>
   To find which tables might potentially include non-local origins (due to
   other subscriptions created on the publisher) try this SQL query:
<programlisting>
# substitute &lt;pub-names&gt; below with your publication name(s) to be queried
SELECT DISTINCT PT.schemaname, PT.tablename
FROM pg_publication_tables PT,
     pg_subscription_rel PS
     JOIN pg_class C ON (C.oid = PS.srrelid)
     JOIN pg_namespace N ON (N.oid = C.relnamespace)
WHERE N.nspname = PT.schemaname AND
      C.relname = PT.tablename AND
      PT.pubname IN (&lt;pub-names&gt;);
</programlisting></para>

 </refsect1>

 <refsect1>
  <title>Examples</title>

  <para>
   Create a subscription to a remote server that replicates tables in
   the publications <literal>mypublication</literal> and
   <literal>insert_only</literal> and starts replicating immediately on
   commit:
<programlisting>
CREATE SUBSCRIPTION mysub
         CONNECTION 'host=192.168.1.50 port=5432 user=foo dbname=foodb'
        PUBLICATION mypublication, insert_only;
</programlisting>
  </para>

  <para>
   Create a subscription to a remote server that replicates tables in
   the <literal>insert_only</literal> publication and does not start replicating
   until enabled at a later time.
<programlisting>
CREATE SUBSCRIPTION mysub
         CONNECTION 'host=192.168.1.50 port=5432 user=foo dbname=foodb'
        PUBLICATION insert_only
               WITH (enabled = false);
</programlisting></para>
 </refsect1>

 <refsect1>
  <title>Compatibility</title>

  <para>
   <command>CREATE SUBSCRIPTION</command> is a <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>
   extension.
  </para>
 </refsect1>

 <refsect1>
  <title>See Also</title>

  <simplelist type="inline">
   <member><xref linkend="sql-altersubscription"/></member>
   <member><xref linkend="sql-dropsubscription"/></member>
   <member><xref linkend="sql-createpublication"/></member>
   <member><xref linkend="sql-alterpublication"/></member>
  </simplelist>
 </refsect1>
</refentry>
