Re: Diff/Patch integration -> SQL cvs clone

> Bruce Momjian <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:
> > Peter, should plsh be added to our supplied server-side programming
> > languages? Seems like a major feature to me and to others as well.
>
> While plsh is surely a cool hack, I've got considerable unease about
> making it into an officially supported feature. The only reasons I can
> see for wanting to use it (over plpgsql, pltcl, plperl, etc) are
> inherently violations of transaction semantics. Who's going to roll
> back your sendmail call when the calling transaction later aborts?
> What's going to ensure that the order of external effects has something
> to do with the serialization order that the database assigns to several
> concurrent transactions?
>
> IMHO plsh is a great tool for shooting yourself in the foot (with a
> large-gauge firearm, in fact). People who know what they're doing are
> welcome to use it ... but those sorts of people can find and install
> it for themselves.
>
> Of course the same worries apply to the untrusted variants of pltcl,
> plperl, etc. Perhaps we need to document the risks they carry. But
> plsh hasn't even got the possibility of a trusted variant :-(

Yes, I see your point, but if you need to do something in the operating
system, like send mail, you are stuck with leaving transactions
semantics and security anyway. If they have to leave those anyway, why
not give them simple shell scripts?

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