Re: idea: storing view source in system catalogs

On Wed, 2008-05-21 at 10:40 +0200, Andreas Pflug wrote:
> Florian Pflug wrote:
> >
> > But maybe you could store the whitespace appearing before (or after?)
> > a token in the parse tree that is stored for a view. That might not
> > allow reconstructing the *precise* statement, but at least the
> > reconstructed statement would preserve newlines and indention - which
> > probably is the whole reason for wanting to store the original
> > statement in the first place, no? I
>
>
> Not the whole reason. To get a view definition that is more readable,
> the pretty_bool option of pg_get_viewdef already does some newline and
> indent formatting. Not the initial formatting, but Good Enough (TM), I
> believe.
>
> What's really lost is any comment that might have existed in the initial
> source. I previously had the idea to invent comment nodes, but never
> came to implement them.

Is'nt a view roughly equivalent to a SQL language FUNCTION with no
arguments and a single select.

If it is so, then I can't see, why we can store the source for functions
but not for VIEWs

like this -

hannu=# create function viewfunc(out pg_proc) language sql as $$ select
* from pg_proc where proname = 'viewfunc' $$;
CREATE FUNCTION
hannu=# \x
Expanded display is on.
hannu=# select * from viewfunc();
-[ RECORD 1 ]--+---------------------------------------------------
proname | viewfunc
pronamespace | 2200
proowner | 10
prolang | 14
procost | 100
prorows | 0
proisagg | f
prosecdef | f
proisstrict | f
proretset | f
provolatile | v
pronargs | 0
prorettype | 81
proargtypes |
proallargtypes | {81}
proargmodes | {o}
proargnames |
prosrc | select * from pg_proc where proname = 'viewfunc'
probin | -
proconfig |
proacl |

---------------
Hannu