Re: Making pgsql error messages more developers' friendly.

From: Csaba Nagy <nagy(at)ecircle-ag(dot)com>
To: Jan Wieck <JanWieck(at)Yahoo(dot)com>
Cc: Rajesh Kumar Mallah <mallah(at)trade-india(dot)com>, Postgres general mailing list <pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: Making pgsql error messages more developers' friendly.
Date: 2003-06-30 14:41:04
Message-ID: 1056984064.24694.62.camel@coppola.ecircle.de
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LOL !

You take it too seriously.
But yes, users (i.e. non-developers of a product) speak a different
language I guess.

"This and that DB is better because it implements this and that feature
and you don't !!!"

would translate to:

"It would be very nice if your fine DB product would support this and
that feature because we discovered that it's very useful (or just plain
convenient) while using that other DB, which we would like to change
with yours, but little things like this prevent us"

All depends on interpretation. But the bottom line is that a product
will most likely improve beyond the usage of it's own developers if it
responds to user criticisms.

Cheers,
Csaba.

On Mon, 2003-06-30 at 15:30, Jan Wieck wrote:
> Csaba Nagy wrote:
> > What about development time ? It is always nice to have the database
> > give you some actually useful pointers instead of making you loose your
> > time chasing around the error in your code. We are all just humans, do
> > mistakes, and do like when the mistake is easily spotted by an error
> > message pointing to the right place.
> > So the rationale of the request is legitimate.
>
> I never claimed that the request itself wasn't legitimate. And I totally
> agree with you up to here.
>
> > Your repulsion against comparisons with other databases might be
> > understandable, but it's the best reference language for non-developer
> > postgres users to describe the requested feature in terms of the feature
> > of another database.
>
> You think that the original statement "MySQL is better in these small
> things" was an attempt to "describe the requested feature" ... really?
>
> Guess I need to learn some non-developer english someday. Seems to be a
> completely different language.
>
>
> Jan
>
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Csaba.
> >
> > On Sat, 2003-06-28 at 17:20, Jan Wieck wrote:
> >> Rajesh Kumar Mallah wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Hi Folks,
> >> >
> >> > Shudnt' messages like
> >> >
> >> > ERROR: value too long for type character varying(5)
> >>
> >> Maybe, yes. It's just not that trivial to do.
> >>
> >> > MySQL is better in these small things.
> >> >
> >> > I think in 7.4dev fkey violation are reported better,
> >> > cant such behaviours be extened to other kind of
> >> > exceptions?
> >>
> >> We are working on it. But pointing to MySQL doesn't help a bit. If you
> >> like MySQL better, then use MySQL instead and don't bother with the side
> >> effects from the data type abstraction you actually bumped into.
> >>
> >> Sorry, I'm a bit tired of "MySQL does this ...", "MySQL is better here
> >> ..." and so on and so forth. No however good error message system can be
> >> used by the application programmer as replacement for input data
> >> validation. Type checking, foreign keys, check constraints, they all are
> >> last lines of defense, so that a bug in the application or a missing
> >> input validation doesn't cause greater damage. But they are not a
> >> replacement.
> >>
> >>
> >> Jan
> >>
> >> --
> >> #======================================================================#
> >> # It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
> >> # Let's break this rule - forgive me. #
> >> #================================================== JanWieck(at)Yahoo(dot)com #
> >>
> >>
> >> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> >> TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
> >>
>
>
>
> --
> #======================================================================#
> # It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
> # Let's break this rule - forgive me. #
> #================================================== JanWieck(at)Yahoo(dot)com #
>

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