Re: System catalog documentation chapter

On Tue, Jul 19, 2022 at 1:22 PM Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>
> Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> writes:
> > On Sat, Jul 16, 2022 at 10:53:17AM +0200, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> >> Maybe this whole notion that "system views" is one thing is not suitable.
>
> > Are you thinking we should just call the chapter "System Catalogs and
> > Views" and just place them alphabetically in a single chapter?
>
> I didn't think that was Peter's argument at all. He's complaining
> that "system views" isn't a monolithic category, which is a reasonable
> point, especially since we have a bunch of built-in views that appear
> in other chapters. But to then also confuse them with catalogs isn't
> improving the situation.
>

My original post was prompted when I was scrolling in the
table-of-contents for chapter 53 "System Catalogs". unable to find a
Catalog because I did not realise it was really a View. It was only
when I couldn't find it alphabetically that I noticed there was
*another* appended list of Views, but then the "System Views" heading
seemed strangely buried at the same heading level as everything
else... and although there was an "Overview" section for Catalogs
there was no "Overview" section for the Views...

Maybe I was only seeing the tip of the iceberg. I'm not sure anymore
what the best solution is. I do prefer the recent changes over how it
used to be, but perhaps they also introduce a whole new set of
problems.

---

(It used to look like this)

Chapter 53. "System Catalogs"
======
53.1. Overview
53.2. pg_aggregate
53.3. pg_am
53.4. pg_amop
53.5. pg_amproc
...
53.66. System Views <--- 2nd heading just hiding here....
53.67. pg_available_extensions
53.68. pg_available_extension_versions
53.69. pg_backend_memory_contexts
53.70. pg_config
...

------
Kind Regards,
Peter Smith.
Fujitsu Australia.