Re: [HACKERS] What can we learn from MySQL?

Dennis Bjorklund <db(at)zigo(dot)dhs(dot)org> writes:
> On Fri, 23 Apr 2004, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
>> When I ask about non-standard complience of Pg (turning unquoted
>> identifiers to lowercase instead of uppercase, violating the SQL
>> standard, and requring an expensive rewrite of clients), and I get the
>> answer "uppercase is ugly", I think something is wrong.

> I would love if someone fixed pg so that one can get the standard
> behaviour. It would however have to be a setting that can be changed so we
> are still backward compatible.

Yes. There have been repeated discussions about how to do this, but
no one's come up with a solution that seems workable. See the archives
if you care.

For the foreseeable future, backwards compatibility is going to trump
standards compliance on this point. That doesn't mean we don't care
about compliance; it does mean that it is not the *only* goal.

I find it a bit odd to be debating this point in this thread, seeing
that one of the big lessons I draw from MySQL is "standards compliance
does not matter"...

regards, tom lane