Re: Views, views, views! (long)

On 2005-05-05, "Greg Sabino Mullane" <greg(at)turnstep(dot)com> wrote:
>> The purpose of the new system views...
>
> As long as they are in a separate schema (like information_schema,
> but hopefully not as long). pg_views? pg_info? information_skema? :)

The proof-of-concept implementation puts them in pg_sysviews. This is
by no means cast in stone.

>> But if you think that nobody needs these views, it's because you
>> haven't had much contact with end users lately.
>
> Well, who really *does* need these? After all, end users should be
> using an interface of some sort. (DBD::Pg, phpPgAdmin, psql, etc). It's
> the job of the people writing those interfaces to know the system
> catalogs well and present them to the users in a pretty fashion. If
> people want an "easy" way to look up the information, they use an
> interface. If not, they should learn the system catalogs.

One thing that has become _absolutely_ clear to me in the process of
writing these views is that telling people to use the system catalogs
is a _really_ bad idea. I've seen a number of apps now that have been
doing incorrect catalog lookups and breaking to a greater or lesser
extent as a result; furthermore, writing the views has often required
delving into details of the backend implementation that are not well
documented. (See a recent discussion here on typmods for an example.)

--
Andrew, Supernews
http://www.supernews.com - individual and corporate NNTP services