It still means you have to be wary about who/what you give access to the DB. For some (most?) apps you'd do that anyway, but others might benefit from a more open policy. What if someone has a legacy app build for 4.x ... the quickest way to get it working is just to set the mode to "traditional". It might be a minor thing, but it's something you simply won't have to worry about with Postgres. (Unless there's a way to disable a mode completely on the server, in which case ignore me :)