Re: BUG #5488: pg_dump does not quote column names -> pg_restore may fail when upgrading

* Tom Lane (tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us) wrote:
> Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net> writes:
> > Erm, I don't know that we deal with function-body problems today, even
> > when using the newer version of pg_dump, do we?
>
> Right, any forward-compatibility problems arising inside functions
> are strictly the user's to deal with, and always have been.
>
> So Stefan's point is that we could get from maybe an 80% fix to maybe
> a 90% fix, after expending quite a bit of trouble. Not clear it's
> worth it.

To this point, and perhaps to the other regarding VIEW definitions to
some extent, while the solution would move us from 80% to 90% of "things
in PG that might cause a restore from an older pg_dump to fail", I think
another metric we should consider is "% of our user base, particularly
those more junior, that would benefit". I feel that number to be >10%,
and growing. Additionally, those that this would really help are the
same people who don't have complex views and/or stored procedures.

I'm not a huge fan of using that to argue out of dealing with view
definitions (that's certainly a complex problem and I understand the
issue you raise there), but I'm not seeing a path to fixing that yet.
Thanks for pointing that out. Perhaps that's what we get for having
those silly complex VIEW thingies that certain others only added very
recently. :)

Thanks again,

Stephen