Re: SHOW TABLES

On 16 July 2010 13:49, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:
> Bruce Momjian wrote:
>> Andrew Dunstan wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > Bruce Momjian wrote:
>> > > I assume SHOW TABLES would only be useful for interactive terminal
>> > > sesssions, not for application code (which should use
>> > > information_schema), so what non-psql interactive terminal programs are
>> > > there?
>> > >
>> > >
>> >
>> > I think your assumption is questionable.
>> >
>> > Plenty of people use MySQL's "SHOW TABLES" in non-interactive settings
>> > (for good or ill). That's why any suggestion that we should return
>> > anything other than a resultset seems like a really terrible idea to me.
>>
>> If they are writing an application, finding the query to show all tables
>> is the least of their problems.  I don't see how SHOW TABLE
>> significantly helps in that case, except make things 0.001% easier,
>> while creating duplicate functionality in Postgres.
>
> What would be interesting is if SHOW TABLES was psql-only, and showed
> the output in multi-column format, like ls -C.  That would a a new
> display format and new useful functionality.
>
> --

The problem is people are stating different requirements.

- to make it easy for new users of psql
- to simplify fetching basic database information from any client application
- to ease transition between MySQL and PostgreSQL

The outcome would depend on what's needed. Like providing a
pg_user_tables view for people to select from, using LIST TABLES as a
more meaningful alternative to SHOW TABLES, providing hints for MySQL
users using psql... etc.

Thom