Re: Pet Peeves?

On 1/29/09, Gregory Stark <stark(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> wrote:
>
> I'm putting together a talk on "PostgreSQL Pet Peeves" for discussion at
> FOSDEM 2009 this year. I have a pretty good idea what some them are of course,

Here are couple of mine. Had to dig a bit. There may be some
duplication with others:

*) In place upgrade (everybody's #1)
*) lack of *generally usable* standalone mode which leads to:
*) libpq. needs rewrite: incorporate libpqtypes functionality, sane
error system, many other things. would be nice to be able to use
libpq in standalone as described above.
*) update foo set foo = foo; doesn't work (currently thread on hackers)
*) named parameters in plain sql functions don't work
*) can't use insert/update returning in subquery (prob #3 requested
after IPU and hot standy)
*) stored procedures!! to some, this means multiset. to me, it means
pl/pgsql without automatic transaction mgmt. ideally, we get both
*) CTE expressions can't end in insert (slight variant of above)
*) no easy way to have database feed constants into 'create replace
function' would be nice to have above take string expression, not
literal
*) libpqtypes bumped to contrib :D
*) would be nice to run some arbitrary sql when session dumps. only
possible today with highly circuitous on_proc_exit that connects back
to the database...ugh
*) listen/notify needs reworking
*) pl/sh should be raised to contrib at minimum. diamond in the rough

and my #1 pet peeve is <drumroll>:
*) having to answer questions about why count(*) is slow!

merlin