Re: Tablefunc crosstab error messages

On Mon, Aug 27, 2012 at 08:07:02PM -0400, Mali Akmanalp wrote:
> Returning the type information to the caller seems like a pain
> but compatCrosstabTupleDescs already has instances in it where it fails
> with an error message, so I propose we just do that and tell the user the
> expected and actual types here, instead of returning false here and
> throwing a generic error message in the caller.
>
> What do you think? Let me know so I can write up a patch for you guys.

That would prove helpful, +1 from me.

> Also, just curious, is the reason the query passed into crosstab is a
> string (rather than an SQL expression) that it's just easier to implement
> that way?

Yes. Accepting the query as proper SQL syntax would require modifying the
backend grammar. Extensions cannot do that, but they can define functions
accepting a string and run it as a SQL command.