Re: The serial pseudotypes

On 25/08/2019 19:42, Tom Lane wrote:
> Vik Fearing <vik(dot)fearing(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
>> On 25/08/2019 18:59, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> Vik Fearing <vik(dot)fearing(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
>>>> Is there a reason why the serial pseudotypes still behave as they did
>>>> pre-v10 and don't map to GENERATED BY DEFAULT AS IDENTITY these days?
>>> Backwards compatibility?
>> With what?
> Applications that expect declaring a serial column to result in the same
> catalog side-effects as before. The default expressions look different,
> and the dependencies look different. For instance, an app that expected
> atthasdef to tell it something about what happens when a column's value
> is omitted would be surprised. An app that thought it could alter the
> default expression for a column originally declared serial would be even
> more surprised.
>
> Admittedly, many of these things look a lot like the sort of system
> catalog changes we make routinely and expect applications to cope.

Indeed.

> But I don't think this would be a cost-free change. Serials have acted
> the way they do for a pretty long time.

I guess I'll keep telling people serials are obsolete then.

--

Vik Fearing