Re: Extension Templates S03E11

Simon Riggs <simon(at)2ndQuadrant(dot)com> writes:
> On 17 December 2013 18:32, Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net> wrote:
>> I have no idea where you're going with this, but I *do* object to
>> sticking an SQL script which defines a bunch of objects into a catalog
>> table *right next to where they are properly defined*. There's just no
>> sense in it that I can see, except that it happens to mimic what we do
>> today- to no particular purpose.

> The purpose is clear: so it is part of the database backup. It's a
> fairly boring purpose, not fancy at all. But it is a purpose, indeed
> *the* purpose.

The point Stephen is making is that it's just as easy, and far more
reliable, to dump the package-or-whatever-you-call-it by dumping the
definitions of the contained objects, as to dump it by dumping the text
blob it was originally created from. So I don't see a lot of merit
to claiming that we need to keep the text blob for this purpose.

We did it differently for extensions in part because you can't dump a .so
as a SQL command, so dump-the-contained-objects wasn't going to be a
complete backup strategy in any case. But for a package containing only
SQL objects, that's not a problem.

> We aim to have the simplest implementation that meets the stated need
> and reasonable extrapolations of that. Text in a catalog table is the
> simplest implementation. That is not a reason to reject it, especially
> when we aren't suggesting a viable alternative.

The first part of this assertion is debatable, and the claim that no
viable alternative has been suggested is outright wrong.

regards, tom lane