Re: [pgsql-hackers] Re: Extending System Views: proposal for 8.1/8.2

On Sun, Jan 23, 2005 at 02:37:28PM -0800, Josh Berkus wrote:
> Jim,
>
> > It's a question of if these views will also be used programatically.
> > ISTM that OIDs are the preffered method of refering to things in code
> > (in fact, aren't there some functions that only take OIDs?). If we want
> > to make names the cannonical way to reference things in code, then I
> > agree that there's not much use to OIDs.
>
> Hmmm .... I think that you and I have different ideas about the purpose of the
> system views. My idea is to provide a stable (through multiple versions of
> pg), human-readable view of the system objects. You obviously want to do
> more -- I'd like details on what that more is, so that we can talk about it.

Really, my only goal is to make using the system views/tables
programatically easier by coming up with a better naming convention.
This isn't directly related to the human-readable stuff, other than
fields that would be common between both sets of views.

Perhaps a good way to accomplish both goals is to have the set of
human-readable views, and to add columns to the system tables/views that
conform with the new, more logical naming convention. This way people
accessing system information programmatically can use pg_catalog (and
migrate to the new naming convention), while people who are doing ad-hoc
queries can just hit the human-readable stuff.

Make sense?
--
Jim C. Nasby, Database Consultant decibel(at)decibel(dot)org
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