Re: [doc] improve tableoid description

On Mon, Oct 19, 2020 at 5:58 PM Ian Lawrence Barwick <barwick(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
> > That line further suggests using
> > regnamespace which is not as efficient as joining with
> > pg_namespace.oid. But pg_namespace won't have as many entries as
> > pg_class so casting to regnamespace might be fine. Should we suggest
> > both the methods somehow?
>
> On further reflection, I think trying to explain all that is going to
> end up as a
> mini-tutorial which is beyond the scope of the explanation of a column, so
> the existing reference to pg_class should be enough.

>
> Revised patch attached just mentioning partitioned tables.

From a user's point of view, it makes sense to differentiate between
partitioning and inheritance, though internally the first uses the
later.

Maybe we could just generalize the sentence as "tableoid can be used
to obtain the table name either by joining against the oid column of
pg_class or casting it to regclass as appropriate." Or just ""tableoid
can be used to obtain the table name.". Probably the users would find
out how to do that from some other part of the document.

<structfield>tableoid</structfield> can be joined against the
<structfield>oid</structfield> column of
<structname>pg_class</structname> to obtain the table name.

But even without that change, the current patch is useful. Please add
it to commitfest so it's not forgotten.

--
Best Wishes,
Ashutosh Bapat