Re: [HACKERS] Re: NOT {NULL|DEFERRABLE} (was: bug in 7.0)

At 05:37 PM 2/29/00 +0100, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
>On Tue, 29 Feb 2000, Don Baccus wrote:
>
>> Because of this, the web toolkit I'm porting is going out with
>> 6.5 only, rather than 6.5 or 7.0 beta with 7.0 beta recommended.
>> It's a pity, bugs and some of our hacks around missing features
>> in 6.5 make portions of the toolkit differ in their output than
>> the Oracle version. This hurts the credibility of the port,
>> to some degree, and simply adds ammunition to those who argue
>> that trying to do this kind of project on top of Postgres is
>> foolishness incarnate.
>
>It's BETA. You're not supposed to use it in production work. Beta is a
>feature freeze, then we try to sort out the bugs.

So is our web toolkit release. So is the AOLserver Version 3 that
we're using. We're putting out a beta suite, so to speak. I didn't
make that clear. Obviously we're not going to put out a production
version with all-beta componets.

"Don't be concerned this is a dot-zero release. PostgreSQL does its
best to put out only solid releases, and this one is no exception."

I'm now concerned. I wasn't Feb 18th.

Mind you, I made my recommendation that we use 7.0 beta after having
used it in my porting work for about a month, without problems. Just
as I've been using AOLserver version 3, also without problem.

So it's not like I blindly made a decision out of ignorance, I worked
with the upcoming beta in order to make an intellegent decision. As
of Feb 18th, the upcoming beta worked much better with our stuff
than 6.5, and that's the truth.

>As far as I'm concerned it would hurt credibility of the port much more to
>"recommend" a beta version of a database server as its backend.

Again, I didn't make it clear that our port is also a beta, and that
we're only encouraging that people experiment with it, not put up
production web sites, for the next couple of months at least. Sorry
for that confusion.

In that context, I feel comfortable with using tested components even
if they're beta.

Postgres benefits from that aggressiveness as the beta will get some
serious testing in this environment. AOLserver V3 beta won't benefit
to the same degree because it's so (ahem) solid that it's being used
on production web sites using the Oracle version of this toolkit.

...

>we're not primarily
>developing PostgreSQL to work with your toolkit.

I've never suggested that. Jose Soares (sp?) found the same bug
almost simultaneously. We're talking vanilla SQL92. I can use my
Feb 18th snapshot, and will if this doesn't get fixed quickly. My
concern's a lot more general.

I'm not being small-minded or selfish.

>> I actually did the unrolling of the worst cases last night, took
>> me about an hour with "Star Trek Voyager" on in the background
>> as a distraction from how ugly this hack is. Because, with all
>> due respect, Thomas, it is an exceedingly ugly hack. And you
>> can't unroll enough to capture the grammar anyway, it's like
>> trying to enumerate all possible expressions in the grammar
>> rather than parse the general form.
>
>The difference is that the expression space is infinite, whereas unrolling
>all column constraints should be on the order of a dozen or two.

Actually, the column constraint stuff is infinite, too - in the given
SQL92 grammar. Restrictions that exist are due to semantics. The
traditional means of dealing with this - pardon me for being a professional
compiler writer, I was born this way and can't help myself - is to
implement semantic restrictions via semantic analysis, not syntactic
kludges.

It sounds like Tom intends to take a whack at this approach. I'd
offer, but my time's tight at the moment.

- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza(at)pacifier(dot)com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, Pacific Northwest
Rare Bird Alert Service and other goodies at
http://donb.photo.net.