Re: Table rewrites vs. pending AFTER triggers

On Thu, Jan 03, 2008 at 01:08:47PM +0530, Gokulakannan Somasundaram wrote:
> On Jan 3, 2008 12:44 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> > "Gokulakannan Somasundaram" <gokul007(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> > > I actually mean to say that DDLs can be declared as
> > > self-committing.
> >
> > Egad, an Oracle lover in our midst.
>
> :). True, its an impact of working more with Oracle. I made the
> suggestion here, because it might reduce some if conditions.
>
> > Most of us think that roll-back-able DDL is one of the best
> > features of Postgres, and certainly one of our best selling points
> > vis-a-vis Oracle. Don't expect us to give it up.
>
> Can you please explain, any specific use-case where DDLs are
> necessary within a transaction?

Let's imagine that you want to do a DDL change to a production
database. You've tested the change script on a test database, but you
want to be sure you get *exactly* from the place you were to the place
you want to be. With transactional DDL, you know absolutely for sure
that you've done either the whole change or none of it, i.e. not
half-way in between :)

Cheers,
David (a giant fan of transactional DDL)
--
David Fetter <david(at)fetter(dot)org> http://fetter.org/
Phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666 Yahoo!: dfetter
Skype: davidfetter XMPP: david(dot)fetter(at)gmail(dot)com

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