Re: Let's drop two obsolete features which are bear-traps for novices

From: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net>
Cc: Jaime Casanova <jaime(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>, Andres Freund <andres(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>, PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>, Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com>
Subject: Re: Let's drop two obsolete features which are bear-traps for novices
Date: 2014-11-02 17:41:59
Message-ID: 1446.1414950119@sss.pgh.pa.us
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I wrote:
> Either way, requiring a dump/reload for upgrade is surely a better answer
> for users of the type than just summarily screwing them.

BTW, after reflecting a bit more I'm less than convinced that this
datatype is completely useless. Even if you prefer to store currency
values in numeric columns, casting to or from money provides a way to
accept or emit values in whatever monetary format the LC_MONETARY locale
setting specifies. That seems like a useful feature, and it's one you
could not easily duplicate using to_char/to_number (not to mention that
those functions aren't without major shortcomings of their own).

A quick trawl through the git history for cash.c indicates that most of
the bug fixes it's gotten recently have concerned doing formatting
correctly for non-US-like LC_MONETARY settings, so I think there are
indeed people out there who care about that capability.

Certainly we could package that capability in another way besides a
datatype, but I think we should actually do so (and give users a release
or two to switch over) before we consider nuking the type.

regards, tom lane

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