Re: patches for items from TODO list

Bruce Momjian wrote:
> We considered putting XML in psql or libpq in the past, but the problem
> is that interfaces like jdbc couldn't take advantage of it.

Well, you could implement it as a C UDF and use SPI. Or write it as a C
client library, and use JNI. Or just provide a Java implementation --
it's not like the COPY -> XML transformation is very complex.

To restate the case:

- I don't see how this feature is useful. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I
don't think there's a lot of user demand for it (feel free to
demonstrate the contrary)

- The COPY -> XML transformation is trivial -- it would be easy for
clients to roll their own. At the same time, there is no standard or
canonical XML representation for COPY output, and I can easily imagine
different clients needing different representations. So there is limited
value in providing a single, inflexible backend implementation.

- There's no need for it to be in the backend, anyway. Perhaps if there
were overwhelming demand for this functionality, we would need to
provide it for all client libraries and the easiest solution would be to
put it in the backend, but I don't think that's the case.

If people really think XML COPY output mode is useful, why not implement
it client-side first and host it on pgfoundry? If lots of people are
using the client-side code, we can consider moving it into the core
distribution or the backend itself at that point.

-Neil