Re: User-friendliness for DROP RESTRICT/CASCADE

On Wed, 2002-06-26 at 22:30, Tom Lane wrote:
> Joe Conway <mail(at)joeconway(dot)com> writes:
> > It would be nice if the recursive dependency checking function was
> > available as an end user function too, so you could analyze dependencies
> > before even trying to drop something, or even just to understand a
> > database schema you've inherited from someone else.
>
> It'd be a pretty trivial exercise to build something that looks at the
> pg_depend entries and generates whatever kind of display you want.
>
> David Kaplan reminded me that there is another UI issue to be
> considered: when we *are* doing a DROP CASCADE, should the dropped
> dependent objects be reported somehow? As it stands, Rod's patch emits
> elog(NOTICE) messages in this case, but I am wondering whether that will
> be seen as useful or merely annoying chatter.

If the notices about implicit drops (triggers on tables, etc.) has been
found to be useful in both creation and destruction then I would assume
that this information would be wanted as well.

If the above information has not been found to be useful in the past,
then I would expect it to continue as chatter.

Personally, I find it to be chatter and turn off NOTICES in general, but
believe it to be consistent with similar messages in the past.