Re: Materialized views don't show up in information_schema

* Peter Eisentraut (peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net) wrote:
> On 10/16/14 9:45 AM, Stephen Frost wrote:
> > Alright, coming back to this, I have to ask- how are matviews different
> > from views from the SQL standard's perspective? I tried looking through
> > the standard to figure it out (and I admit that I probably missed
> > something), but the only thing appears to be a statement in the standard
> > that (paraphrased) "functions are run with the view is queried" and that
> > strikes me as a relatively minor point..
>
> To me, the main criterion is that you cannot DROP VIEW a materialized view.

That is an entirely correctable situation. We don't require 'DROP
UNLOGGED TABLE'.

> Generally, if the information schema claims that a
> view/table/function/etc. named "foo" exists, then I should be able to
> operate on "foo" using the basic operations for a
> view/table/function/etc. of that name. I think think DROP VIEW is a
> basic operation for a view. Others might disagree.

This strikes me as a reason to allow DROP VIEW and perhaps other
operations against a matview, not as a reason why matviews aren't views.

> More subtly, if we claim that a materialized view is a view, then we
> cannot have asynchronously updated materialized views, because then we
> have different semantics.

This is, at least, a reason I can understand, though I'm not sure I see
it as sufficient to say matviews are so different from views that they
shouldn't be listed as such.

Thanks,

Stephen