Re: Typed table DDL loose ends

On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 11:33 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
>> On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 10:48 AM, Noah Misch <noah(at)leadboat(dot)com> wrote:
>>> FWIW, the term "stand-alone composite type" appears twice in our documentation.
>
>> Hmm, OK.  Anyone else have an opinion on the relative merits of:
>
>> ERROR: type stuff is not a composite type
>> vs.
>> ERROR: type stuff is not a stand-alone composite type
>
>> The intent of adding "stand-alone" was, I believe, to clarify that it
>> has to be a CREATE TYPE stuff AS ... type, not just a row type (that
>> is, naturally, composite, in some less-pure sense).  I'm not sure
>> whether the extra word actually makes it more clear, though.
>
> In 99.9% of the code and docs, a table rowtype is a perfectly good
> composite type.  I agree with Noah that just saying "composite type"
> is inadequate here; but I'm not sure that "stand-alone" is a helpful
> adjective either.  What about inverting the message phrasing, ie
>
> ERROR: type stuff must not be a table's row type

It also can't be a view's row type, a sequence's row type, a foreign
table's row type...

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company