Re: autogenerated column names + views are a dump hazard

Andres Freund <andres(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
> On 2015-03-03 09:39:03 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
>> And on the third hand ... doing that would really only be robust as long
>> as you assume that the output will be read by a server using exactly the
>> same FigureColname() logic as what we are using. So maybe the whole idea
>> is a bad one, and we should just bite the bullet and print AS clauses
>> always.

> I think this is the way to go though. There's different extremes we can
> go to though - the easiest is to simply remove the attname = "?column?"
> assignment from get_target_list(). That way plain Var references (aside
> from whole row vars/subplans and such that get_variable() deals with)
> don't get a forced alias, but everything else does. That seems like a
> good compromise between readability and safety. get_rule_expr() deals
> with most of the "nasty" stuff.

I wasn't aware that there was any room for "compromise" on the safety
aspect. If pg_dump gets this wrong, that means pg_upgrade is broken,
for example. That's why I was thinking that relying on the pretty
flag might be a reasonable thing. pg_dump would be unconditionally
right, and we'd not uglify EXPLAIN or \d+ output.

regards, tom lane