Re: Call for objections: put back OIDs in CREATE TABLE

On Tue, 21 Jan 2003, Tom Lane wrote:

> We've gotten a couple of complaints now about the fact that 7.3 doesn't
> include an OID column in a table created via CREATE TABLE AS or SELECT
> INTO. Unless I hear objections, I'm going to revert it to including an
> OID, and back-patch the fix for 7.3.2 as well.

I object. I personally think we should be moving towards not using OIDs
as the default behaviour, inasmuch as we can, for several reasons:

1. It's not a relational concept.

2. The OID wraparound problem can get you.

3. Other SQL databases don't do this.

4. It's hidden, rather than exposed, and hidden things are generally a
bad idea.

5. We should default to what gives us better performance, rather than
worse.

> See discussion a couple days ago on pgsql-general, starting at
> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2003-01/msg00669.php

There didn't seem to be many people clamouring to have it back.

The ideal sitaution for me would be to have WITHOUT OIDS be the default
for all table creations, and but of course allow WITH OIDS for backward
compatability. But yeah, I know that this can introduce problems with
old dumps, and may not be entirely easy to implement.

cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs(at)cynic(dot)net> +81 90 7737 2974 http://www.netbsd.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC