Re: Statistics Import and Export

>
> IIRC, "variadic any" requires having at least one variadic parameter.
> But that seems fine --- what would be the point, or even the
> semantics, of calling pg_set_attribute_stats with no data fields?
>

If my pg_dump run emitted a bunch of stats that could never be imported,
I'd want to know. With silent failures, I don't.

> Perhaps we could
> invent a new backend function that extracts the actual element type
> of a non-null anyarray argument.
>

A backend function that we can't guarantee exists on the source system. :(

> Another way we could get to no-coercions is to stick with your
> signature but declare the relevant parameters as anyarray instead of
> text. I still think though that we'd be better off to leave the
> parameter matching to runtime, so that we-don't-recognize-that-field
> can be a warning not an error.
>

I'm a bit confused here. AFAIK we can't construct an anyarray in SQL:

# select '{1,2,3}'::anyarray;
ERROR: cannot accept a value of type anyarray

> I think you missed my point: you're doing that inefficiently,
> and maybe even with race conditions. Use the relcache's copy
> of the pg_class row.
>

Roger Wilco.

> Well, I'm here to debate it if you want, but I'll just note that *one*
> error will be enough to abort a pg_upgrade entirely, and most users
> these days get scared by errors during manual dump/restore too. So we
> had better not be throwing errors except for cases that we don't think
> pg_dump could ever emit.
>

That's pretty persuasive. It also means that we need to trap for error in
the array_in() calls, as that function does not yet have a _safe() mode.