Re: [HACKERS] Re: [SQL] Proposed Changes to PostgreSQL

> Chris Bitmead <chrisb(at)nimrod(dot)itg(dot)telstra(dot)com(dot)au> writes:
>
> I'll comment on the other issues later ... but I will say that I don't
> think it's acceptable to add *any* overhead to standard-SQL queries
> in order to support inheritance better. The vast majority of our users
> want SQL performance and don't give a damn about inheritance. We have
> to pay attention to that.
>

Well said !

Actually I'm a little bit uncertain what ORDBMS really improves ? After
writing a full mapper and wrapper for PostgreSQL and a Smalltalk dialect
I see really no usage for these additional inheritance features databases
like PostgreSQL offer.

Some points about this:

- all these additional features are very specific to PostgreSQL and
are not compatible with other databases. Writing an application
based on these features results in non-portable systems.

- Speed is still a very, very important feature for a database. A
single query, which uses about 5 seconds because the optimizer
is not very clever to use several indices to improove the
query execution is much more worse and can change the structure
of the whole application program.

- when creating automatic sql-queries through a mapper one can get
very complicated sql queries which tests the parser very hard and
the limits of PostgreSQL has been seen very quickly during
the development of the wrapper above.

What I'm missing from these new database are structural changes to
the query system: the possibility to execute complicated
concatenated queries on the server .. perhaps with different
parameters.

Just some ideas about all these nice features

Marten