Re: COPY FROM view

So we don't want COPY FROM VIEW in 8.2? Even if we later support COPY
(SELECT ...), aren't we still going to want to copy from a view? I
guess not because you would just do COPY (SELECT * FROM view)?

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Tom Lane wrote:
> Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)alvh(dot)no-ip(dot)org> writes:
> > I've been having the COPY FROM patch that was posted on pgsql-patches
> > some time ago (I think from Hannu Krossing), sitting on my machine, with
> > the intention to commit it for 8.2. However there's something I'm not
> > very sure about -- the patch creates an execution plan by passing a
> > literal "SELECT * FROM view" to pg_parse_query, pg_analyze_and_rewrite,
> > and finally planner().
>
> > I'm sure we can make this work appropiately, patching over the quoting
> > issues that the patch doesn't deal with, but I'm unsure if this is an
> > acceptable approach. (Actually I think it isn't.) But what is an
> > acceptable way to do it?
>
> It seems to me that we had decided that "COPY FROM VIEW" is not even the
> conceptually right way to think about the missing feature. It forces
> you to create a view (at least a temporary one) in order to do what you
> want. Furthermore it brings up the question of why can't you COPY TO
> VIEW. The correct way to think about it is to have a way of dumping the
> output of any arbitrary SELECT statement in COPY-like format.
>
> There was some previous discussion of exactly how to go about that;
> check the archives. Offhand I think we might have liked the syntax
> COPY (parenthesized-SELECT-statement) TO ...
> but there was also some argument in favor of using a separate statement
> that basically "sets the output mode" for a subsequent SELECT. I'm
> not sure if anyone thought about how it would play with psql's \copy
> support, but that's obviously something to consider.
>
> regards, tom lane
>
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EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com

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