Re: argtype_inherit() is dead code

On Sun, Apr 17, 2005 at 07:01:41PM -0400, Christopher Browne wrote:
> The world rejoiced as decibel(at)decibel(dot)org ("Jim C. Nasby") wrote:
> > On Sun, Apr 17, 2005 at 06:56:01AM -0700, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> >> >Is it really an important area to improve, or are there other
> >> >priorities? I know some people wished we had better support for
> >> >inheritance, but how strong is that wish?
> >
> > FWIW, I think people might be more likely to use the OO features
> > that PostgreSQL already has if there was better OO support in one or
> > more of the languages. Oracle has some support along these lines and
> > it was nice being able to make use of it the last time I used
> > Oracle. I don't remember the exact details, and I don't think
> > they're necessarily the way you'd want to do it in PostgreSQL
> > anyway, but it was nice being able to do things like expose a
> > type/class that knew how to pull info from the database as well as
> > store it there.
>
> What is there, really, to add?
>
> "Object Orientation" is all about the notion of having data that is
> aware of its type, and where there can be a dispatching of methods
> against those types.
>
> There is already a perfectly functional ability to dispatch based on
> argument types.
>
> These essentials are there.

Yes, but they're only there when it comes to storing data. There's
nothing allowing you to cohesively combine code and data.

An object should be able to have methods attached to it, for example.
And that functionality is essentially missing. There's no way to present
a combined set data and code that operates on that data.

It doesn't really matter why this kind of functionality is missing; the
fact that it is missing means it's much less likely that any of the OO
stuff will be used.

I think the current limitations (foreign keys, and cross-table
constraints) are issues as well. It might also help if the docs had some
info about how inherited tables worked 'under the covers', so people
knew what kind of overhead they implied.
--
Jim C. Nasby, Database Consultant decibel(at)decibel(dot)org
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