Re: Extending System Views: proposal for 8.1/8.2

Jim C. Nasby wrote:
> On another naming note; the naming convention for system stuff has
> always driven me nuts. Some the letter prefix (ie: tab for tables) in
> front of every field name, with no underscores or anything. Extensive
> use of abbreviations that you need to remember (ie: indnatts, indexprs,
> indpred). No use of underscores (indisunique). Yet the view and table
> names do use underscores.

I agree the naming conventions for system catalog columns is less than
optimal, but it seems a net loss to rename columns that already exist
(given the amount of code that would need to be updated, both within the
tree and in admin utilities and the like). Renaming all the system
catalogs and providing backward compatibility views would mean you'd
only need to modify the PG source, although of course those
modifications would be pretty time-consuming...

In any case, that's no reason not to try for better names in newly-added
system objects.

-Neil