Re: Statistics Import and Export

On Wed, Nov 27, 2024 at 04:00:02PM +0100, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> On 2024-Nov-27, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Nov 27, 2024 at 02:44:01PM +0100, Magnus Hagander wrote:
>> > If you want to avoid both the surprise and confusion factor mentioned before,
>> > maybe what's needed is to *remove* --analyze-in-stages, and replace it with
>> > --analyze-missing-in-stages and --analyze-all-in-stages (with the clear warning
>> > about what --analyze-all-in-stages can do to your system if you already have
>> > statistics).
>> >
>> > That goes with the "immediate breakage that you see right away is better than
>> > silently doing the unexpected where you might not notice the problem until much
>> > later".
>> >
>> > That might trade some of that surprise and confusion for annoyance instead, but
>> > going forward that might be a clearer path?
>>
>> Oh, so remove --analyze-in-stages and have it issue a suggestion, and
>> make two versions --- yeah, that would work too.

We did something similar when we removed exclusive backup mode.
pg_start_backup() and pg_stop_backup() were renamed to pg_backup_start()
and pg_backup_stop() to prevent folks' backup scripts from silently
changing behavior after an upgrade.

> Maybe not remove the option, but add a required parameter:
> --analyze-in-stages=all / missing
>
> That way, if the option is missing, the user can adapt the command line
> according to need.

I like this idea.

--
nathan