[GENERAL] Killing active users

Hi:

 

I have a system where I have 2 DBs.  The first is available to the users for general interaction.  The second gets reloaded with new data once per night and is then “renamed” to the active one if/when the reload went successfully, preserving the old DB as a standby.  Here’s a snapshot of that process.

 

alter database maindb rename to temp;

alter database standby rename to maindb

alter database temp rename to standby

 

The problem is that sometimes the rename fails because there are active users on the available DB... DBD::Pg::db do failed: ERROR:  database "maindb" is being accessed by other users . Because the reload takes place in the wee hours, I feel it’s OK to kill any existing user connections in order to prevent this if I have to. 

 

Q: Is there a way to kill all active users on a DB without having to reboot the DB?

Q: Or is my problem moot in that there is a way to leave those connections alone and attached to the now renamed DB?

 

Thanks in Advance for any help

-dave