Re: RFD: schemas and different kinds of Postgres objects

Hiroshi Inoue <Inoue(at)tpf(dot)co(dot)jp> writes:
> Bill Studenmund wrote:
>> While we may have not been using the terminology of the spec, I think we
>> have been talking about schema paths from SQL99.
>>
>> One difference between our discussions and SQL99 I've noticed is that
>> we've spoken of having the path find functions (and operators and
>> aggregates), types, _and_tables_.

> My understanding is the same.
> Tom, Peter is it right ?

SQL99's SQL-path is very clearly stated to be used only for looking up
routines and user-defined type names. Extending it to cover tables,
operators, and so forth makes sense to me, but we have to recognize
that it is a spec extension and therefore not all the answers we need
can be found in the spec.

I also find it curious that they exclude standard type names from the
search path. It would seem obvious to treat the standard type names
as included in a schema that is part of the search path, but AFAICT
this is not done in the spec. Postgres *has to* do it that way,
however, or give up our whole approach to datatypes; surely we don't
want to hardwire the SQL-standard datatypes into the parser to the
exclusion of the not-so-standard ones.

IMHO, the spec's artificial distinction between system and user types
limits its usefulness as a guide to the questions we're debating here.

regards, tom lane