Re: System catalog documentation chapter

On 14.07.22 22:07, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 12, 2022 at 05:16:41PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>> On Tue, Jul 12, 2022 at 08:56:01PM +0200, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
>>> On 08.07.22 18:07, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>>>> so I guess we can backpatch this with no issues.
>>>
>>> It inserts a new chapter, which would renumber all other chapters. That's a
>>> pretty big change to backpatch. I'm against that.
>>
>> Okay, I can see the renumbering as being confusing so I will do PG 15
>> and head only.
>
> Patch applied to PG 15 and master.

Now that I see the result, I don't think this is really the right
improvement yet.

The new System Views chapter lists views that are effectively
quasi-system catalogs, such as pg_shadow or pg_replication_origin_status
-- the fact that these are views and not tables is secondary. On the
other hand, it lists views that are more on the level of information
schema views, that is, they are explicitly user-facing wrappers around
information available elsewhere, such as pg_sequences, pg_views.

I think most of them are in the second category. So having this chapter
in the "Internals" part seems wrong. But then moving it, say, closer to
where the information schema is documented wouldn't be right either,
unless we move the views in the first category elsewhere.

Also, consider that we document the pg_stats_ views in yet another
place, and it's not really clear why something like
pg_replication_slots, which might often be used together with stats
views, is documented so far away from them.

Maybe this whole notion that "system views" is one thing is not suitable.