Re: MERGE Specification

On Thu, 2008-04-24 at 23:40 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Robert Treat <xzilla(at)users(dot)sourceforge(dot)net> writes:
> > Perhaps a better option would be to implement Merge per spec, and then
> > implement a "replace into" command for the oltp scenario. This way you keep
> > the spec behavior for the spec syntax, and have a clearly non-spec command
> > for non-spec behavior.
>
> In that case, it's a fair question to ask just who will use the "spec"
> syntax. As far as I can tell from years of watching the mailing lists,
> there is plenty of demand for a concurrent-safe insert-or-update
> behavior, and *exactly zero* demand for the other. I challenge you to
> find even one request for the "spec" behavior in the mailing list
> archives. (Simon doesn't count.)

A Freudian slip? Hopefully, you meant "apart from Simon's request." ;-)

> I recently came across the expression "YAGNI", and think it's probably
> pretty relevant to this discussion:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Ain't_Gonna_Need_It

In matters of technical implementation, I follow you almost without
question, and very happily so.

I think all of us should be careful when expressing views on what other
people need or don't need. We sleep soundly after having given such an
opinion, but that doesn't make those opinions valid. I'm not sure if
there is a pithy acronym for that thought.

In this case, I had already agreed to do it the safe way, for OLTP. I
believe there is a need for other behaviour as well, but that isn't the
use case that the majority are expressing at this time.

--
Simon Riggs
2ndQuadrant http://www.2ndQuadrant.com