Re: [patch] Proposal for \crosstabview in psql

Jim Nasby wrote:
> On 3/13/16 12:48 AM, Pavel Stehule wrote:
> >crosstabview is really visualization tool. **But now, there are not any
> >other tool available from terminal.** So this can be significant help to
> >all people who would to use this functionality.
>
> Not just the terminal either. Offhand I'm not aware of *any* fairly simple
> tool that provides crosstab. There's a bunch of complicated/expensive BI
> tools that do, but unless you've gone through the trouble of getting one of
> those setup you're currently pretty stuck.

I'm definitely +1 for this feature in psql also.

Some years ago we had a discussion about splitting psql in two parts, a
bare-bones one which would help script-writing and another one with
fancy features; we decided to keep one tool to rule them all and made
the implicit decision that we would grow exotic, sophisticated features
into psql. ISTM that this patch is going in that direction.

> Ultimately I'd really like some way to remove/reduce the restriction of
> result set definitions needing to be determined at plan time. That would
> open the door for server-side crosstab/pivot as well a a host of other
> things (such as dynamically turning a hstore/json/xml field into a
> recordset).

That seems so far down the road that I don't think it should block the
psql feature being proposed in this thread, but yes I would like that
one too.

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Álvaro Herrera http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
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