Re: Add SPLIT PARTITION/MERGE PARTITIONS commands

On 8/22/24 12:33 PM, Robert Haas wrote:

> I think it is very unlikely that the problems mentioned above are the
> only ones. They're just what I found in an hour or two of testing.
> Even if they were, we're probably too close to release to be rushing
> out last minute fixes to multiple unanticipated security problems. But
> because of the design that was chosen here, I think there is probably
> more stuff here that is not right, some of which is security relevant
> and some of which is just a question of whether we're really getting
> the behavior that we want. And I don't think we can fix all that
> without either a very large number of grotty hacks similar to the one
> installed by 04158e7fa37c2dda9c3421ca922d02807b86df19, or a complete
> redesign of the feature. I believe the latter is probably a wiser
> course of action.

I can't comment on the design as much, but from a release standpoint,
but security concerns this close to the RC/GA period do concern me.

Applying the lessons from PG15 + SQL/JSON where we (and I'll own that I
was the one who pushed hard to include it) let it stay too long when it
should have been reverted, I think we should take more time to work on
this feature, revert it for PG17, and target it for PG18.

I understand it's disappointing to do a late revert of a feature, but I
think it's better to be safer, particularly if we believe there's a an
elevated risk of releasing something with vulnerabilities. As we saw
with SQL/JSON, this we'll give us more time to come up with design we
agree with, further test, and then promote as part of PG18.

Thanks,

Jonathan