Re: Views, views, views! (long)

"Dave Page" <dpage(at)vale-housing(dot)co(dot)uk> writes:
> 3) One example of a catalog change that has caused a number of bug
> reports for us is the removal of pg_database.datpath. Whilst your
> views could have prevented the error itself, we would still have had
> to modify pgAdmin to prevent it displaying the path on newer servers
> as it is completely meaningless - however, do you proprose that your
> views would have retained this column forever?

It's worth noting that we could have left datpath in the catalogs.
Its removal was deliberate: I *wanted* to break any applications
that were looking at it, to ensure that they got updated. If we'd
left it there but nonfunctional, we'd have had subtle bugs in apps
instead of obvious ones. We will have the same tradeoff to make
with respect to these views, anytime the underlying reality changes
in incompatible ways ... which it surely will.

regards, tom lane