Re: WIP: URI connection string support for libpq

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 2:06 PM, Alexander Shulgin
<ash(at)commandprompt(dot)com> wrote:
>
>
>  psql -d postgresql://user(at)pw:host:port/dbname?param1=value1&param2=value2...
>

I'd like to make the controversial proposal that the URL prefix should
be "postgres:" instead of "postgresql:". Postgres is a widely accepted
nickname for the project, and is eminently more pronounceable. Once
the url is established it will be essentially impossible to change
later, but right now only a nearly insurmountable mailing list thread
prevents it.

Excluding references to the "postgresql.org" domain, there are already
5x as many references in the source code to "postgres" (2583 lines)
than to "postgresql" (539 lines). Taking into account that the name of
the binary and the usual Unix user are already postgres, having one
less place which would eventually need changing seems like a good plan
overall.

Here is, for those who have understandably blocked this argument from
their memory, a link to the existing wiki document on the pros and
cons of the two names:
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Postgres

Over at Heroku decided to side with Tom's assessment that "arguably,
the 1996 decision to call it PostgreSQL instead of reverting to plain
Postgres was the single worst mistake this project ever made." (And we
at Heroku have also frustratingly split our references and
occasionally used the "SQL" form.)

Although I do not have the stomach to push for a full renaming blitz,
I felt I must at least make a case for not making the situation any
worse.

My apologies in advance for re-opening this can of worms.

Best regards,
-pvh

PS: It is not in any way shape or form relevant to my argument, nor do
I claim that anyone else should care, but in the spirit of full
disclosure, and depending on how you count, we currently have
somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000 URLs which begin with
postgres:// in our care.

--
Peter van Hardenberg
San Francisco, California
"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt." -- Kurt Vonnegut