Re: PG 9.0 and standard_conforming_strings

On Fri, 2010-01-29 at 15:45 -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Tom Lane wrote:
> > Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> writes:
> > > With the release of Postgres 9.0, should we consider changing the
> > > default for 'standard_conforming_strings'?
> >
> > I'm inclined to think we're going to have enough problems without that.
> > Changing that default will break, approximately speaking, every single
> > Postgres client app. Do you really think more than epsilon of them
> > are clean and ready for such a change?
>
> Well, if they aren't ready now, then we might as well say we are never
> going to change it and update the documentation and TODO list to reflect
> that --- we have had standard_conforming_strings since 2005. We can't
> keep pretending this will happen if we have no intention of doing it.

I would argue that now is the perfect time for a number of reasons:

(1) 9.x regardless of the fact that it is just a number, reflects a
massive change as a whole.

(2) HS/SR are going to be scary things to use for at least 6 months to a
year. That is not to disparage the hard work, just that they are big
enough and invasive enough to make sure we get through a couple of dot
revs before we start seriously recommending them.

(3) As Bruce suggests, we are on year 6 now. I think we can take the
heat.

(4) The 8.3 issue wasn't nearly as bad as Tom is making it out to be.
Yes, there was a lot of WTF going on, but only by people that aren't
paying attention anyway and the work to fix it was pretty nominal.

(5) The time to change it is NOW, so that when we go into beta it
becomes a serious in your face, we have to fix this if we want to be
compatible with v9 of PostgreSQL.

And get this... because of HS and SR, everybody is going to want to be
compatible with v9.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

--
PostgreSQL.org Major Contributor
Command Prompt, Inc: http://www.commandprompt.com/ - 503.667.4564
Consulting, Training, Support, Custom Development, Engineering
Respect is earned, not gained through arbitrary and repetitive use or Mr. or Sir.