Re: WIP: extensible enums

From: Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net>
Cc: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>, Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net>, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us>, Dean Rasheed <dean(dot)a(dot)rasheed(at)gmail(dot)com>, Greg Stark <gsstark(at)mit(dot)edu>, "pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org" <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: WIP: extensible enums
Date: 2010-11-13 22:31:57
Message-ID: AANLkTimyJiA=ypP5Cjd-JMdhrXmKpLsho4PcAESA7mWt@mail.gmail.com
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On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 12:30 PM, Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net> wrote:
> On fre, 2010-11-12 at 17:19 -0500, Robert Haas wrote:
>> If we allow users to name objects, we ought to make every effort to
>> also allow renaming them.  In my mind, the only way renaming is too
>> marginal to be useful is if the feature itself is too marginal to be
>> useful.
>
> The bottom line is, any kind of database object needs to be changeable
> and removable, otherwise there will always be hesitations about its use.
> And when there are hesitations about the use, it's often easiest not to
> bother.
>
> I remember ten years ago or so we used to send people away who requested
> the ability to drop columns, claiming they didn't plan their database
> properly, or they should load it from scratch.  Nowadays that is
> ludicrous; databases live forever, development is agile, everything
> needs to be changeable.

It was ludicrous then, too. I picked MySQL for several projects early
on for precisely the lack of the ability to drop columns in
PostgreSQL.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

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