Re: logical replication syntax (was DROP SUBSCRIPTION, query cancellations and slot handling)

Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 7:46 AM, Petr Jelinek
> <petr(dot)jelinek(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
>> DROP SUBSCRIPTION mysub NODROP SLOT;

> I'm pretty uninspired by this choice of syntax. Logical replication
> seems to have added a whole bunch of syntax that involves prefixing
> words with "no". In various places, there's NODROP, NOREFRESH, NOCOPY
> DATA, NOCONNECT, and NOPUBLISH. But "NO" is not an English prefix,
> and there's no precedent of which I'm aware for such SQL syntax. In
> most places, we've chosen to name the option and then the user set it
> to "on" or "off". So for example you type EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, TIMING
> OFF) or EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, TIMING FALSE), not EXPLAIN (ANALYZE,
> NOTIMING). I think most of the logical replication stuff could have
> been done this way pretty easily, but for some reason it picked a
> completely different approach.

I tend to agree with this criticism, but it's not quite true that we
don't do this anywhere else --- see CREATE USER for one example, where
we have monstrosities like NOBYPASSRLS. Still, at least those are single
words without arguments. "NODROP SLOT" is pretty ugly, not least
because if you want to claim CREATE USER as syntax precedent, you ought
to spell it NODROPSLOT.

Having said that, I doubt that anyone would argue that CREATE USER is
anything but legacy syntax, or that our more recent syntax designs aren't
better models to follow.

It's not quite too late to revisit the syntax of the log rep commands
... shall we add this as an open item?

regards, tom lane