Re: Re: [BUGS] BUG #8128: pg_dump (>= 9.1) failed while dumping a scheme named "old" from PostgreSQL 8.4

On Wed, May 01, 2013 at 11:12:28AM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> David Fetter <david(at)fetter(dot)org> writes:
> > According to SQL:2003 and SQL:2008 (and the draft standard, if
> > that matters) in section 5.2 of Foundation, both NEW and OLD are
> > reserved words, so we're going to need to re-reserve them to
> > comply.
>
> We don't and won't.

Not so fast or so definite, if you please.

I've got a GSoC project in that implements things with both of these
keywords, and doubtless others will use other keywords either this
coming (9.4) cycle or in a later one.

If you want to have a discussion about the timing, that is a perfectly
reasonable discussion to have. Peremptorily saying, "don't and won't"
is not a great way to operate, however tempting it may be for you.

There is a case to be made, and I'm making it here, for pre-reserving
all the keywords and erroring out with "Feature not implemented" for
those not yet implemented. This would keep us, and more importantly
our user base, from wondering when the next random change to the SQL
language would affect them.

I'd suggest doing this over about 3 releases in the sense of warning
people at the appropriate juncture--I'm guessing at least CREATE,
ALTER, pg_dump(all) and pg_upgrade would be involved. Three releases
is just a suggestion intended to start a discussion.

> There are very many other keywords that are less reserved in
> Postgres than in the spec; this is a good thing.

How is it a good thing? Help me understand.

Cheers,
David.
--
David Fetter <david(at)fetter(dot)org> http://fetter.org/
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