Re: [HACKERS] Performance testing of COPY (SELECT) TO

Zoltan Boszormenyi wrote:
> Andrew Dunstan írta:
> >Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> >>Böszörményi Zoltán wrote:
> >>
> >>>what's the problem with COPY view TO, other than you don't like it? :-)
> >>
> >>The problem is that it required a ugly piece of code. Not supporting it
> >>means we can keep the code nice. The previous discussion led to this
> >>conclusion anyway so I don't know why we are debating it again.
> >
> >What is so ugly about it? I haven't looked at the code, but I am
> >curious to know.

It used a "SELECT * FROM %s" string that was passed back to the parser.

> >I also don't recall the consensus being quite so clear cut. I guess
> >there is a case for saying that if it's not allowed then you know that
> >"COPY relname TO" is going to be fast. But, code aesthetics aside, the
> >reasons for disallowing it seem a bit thin, to me.
>
> I would say the timing difference between
> "COPY table TO" and "COPY (SELECT * FROM table) TO"
> was noise, so it's not even faster.

Remember that we were talking about supporting views, not tables. And
if a view uses a slow query then you are in immediate danger of having a
slow COPY. This may not be a problem but it needs to be discussed and
an agreement must be reached before introducing such a change (and not
during feature freeze).

> And an updatable VIEW *may* allow COPY view FROM...

May I remind you that we've been in feature freeze for four weeks
already? Now it's *not* the time to be drooling over cool features that
would be nice to have.

--
Alvaro Herrera http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.