Re: Prepping to break every past release...

>>>>> "Tom" == Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:

> Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net> writes:
>> I think this sounds a lot like another request for a set of system
>> views with nicer names.

Tom> What's the state of the newsysviews project, anyway? I don't
Tom> recall hearing much about it lately.

At the time it was proposed for inclusion (pre 8.1, when it was mostly
but not entirely complete), you personally, as I recall, expressed the
opinion that its objective was impossible; that there was no way to
produce a sufficiently complete set of views that was more stable and
compatible between releases than the system catalogs themselves were.
I believe these sum up your response:

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2005-05/msg00351.php
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2005-05/msg00891.php
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2005-05/msg00940.php

Another common response at the time was "just use information_schema".
(Which is of course inadequate for a huge number of reasons - speed,
hiding of "implementation details", mismatches between pg's behaviour
and the SQL spec, and so on.)

Given the extent to which this criticism of the project was based on
speculation ("we might make changes in future releases that would
break the views"), there was no better answer at the time than "we
think the design is flexible enough to handle that", and very little
of the pushback we got actually showed any signs of having reviewed
the design and (admittedly incomplete) implementation. Accordingly I
stopped spending any time on it and diverted my attention elsewhere.

Now, of course, counting the upcoming 8.4 there have been three (and a
bit - the original design predates 8.1, though it did anticipate some
8.1 features) new releases against which the original concept can be
tested. And, guess what, nothing in those releases has even come close
to invalidating the original design concept (as we knew all along).

If you're still not convinced of that fact, it would be possible to
take the original design and update it to 8.4 following the original
plan. But I'm not prepared to spend any time on this if the only result
is going to be more argument.

--
Andrew (irc:RhodiumToad)