Re: TOAST versus toast

On Wed, Jan 15, 2025 at 10:38 PM Peter Smith <smithpb2250(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 16, 2025 at 3:26 PM Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> >
> > Peter Smith <smithpb2250(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> > > During some recent reviews, I came across some comments mentioning
> "toast" ...
> > > TOAST is a PostgreSQL acronym for "The Oversized-Attribute Storage
> > > Technique" [1].
> >
> > It is indeed an acronym, but usages such as "toasting" are all over
> > our code and docs, as you see. I question whether changing that
> > to "TOASTing" improves readability. I agree that consistently
> > saying "TOAST table" not "toast table" is a good idea, but I'm
> > not quite convinced that removing every last lower-case occurrence
> > is a win, especially in these combined forms.
> >
>

I'm not particularly convinced that "TOAST table" is a good idea; but I
don't hate it either.

TOAST is a "technique", design feature, algorithm, process. When referring
to that concept, using TOAST makes sense. The implementation artifacts are
conveniently labelled e.g., "toast tables", and can be used in the same
capitalization that one would write "foreign table" or "temporary table".
Sure, we can define our made-up label as "TOAST tables" but it just makes
it stand out unnecessarily in comparison to "temporary tables" and the like.

I'd be more interested in making sure all TOAST references are in regards
to the technique and lower-case the ones that aren't.

David J.