Re: [PATCH] Provide rowcount for utility SELECTs

Boszormenyi Zoltan <zb(at)cybertec(dot)at> writes:
> attached is a small patch that makes it possible for clients
> to receive row count for SELECT ... INTO ... and CREATE TABLE ... AS ...

> Comments?

This doesn't look tremendously well thought out to me.

1. As given, the patch changes the result not only for SELECT INTO but
for any SELECT executed in PORTAL_MULTI_QUERY context (consider SELECTs
added by rules for example). It seems like a pretty bad idea for the
result of a statement to depend on context.

2. In the past we have regretted it when we made the same command tag
sometimes have numbers attached and sometimes not (note the hack at
the bottom of PortalRunMulti). It doesn't seem like terribly good
design to do that here. On the other hand, always attaching a count
to SELECT tags would greatly increase the risk of breaking clients.

I'm not at all convinced that this is so useful as to justify taking
any compatibility risks for. People who really need that count can
get it easily enough by breaking the command into a CREATE followed
by INSERT/SELECT.

regards, tom lane