Re: ADD FOREIGN KEY (was Re: [GENERAL] 7.4Beta)

Bruce Momjian wrote:

> Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:
>>
>> >>Well, with the CREATE CONSTRAINT TRIGGER you _can_, but we already have
>> >>a consensus that we don't _want_ that. Probably we should declare it
>> >>deprecated and remove it in 7.5. And the option currently under
>> >>discussion is exactly what will cause ALTER TABLE to let you, but IMHO
>> >>that _should_ be restricted.
>>
>> How can we ever remove it - what about people upgrading from 7.0, 7.1,
>> 7.2? Also, people upgrading from 7.3 who've never heard of adddepend...
>
> Not sure. We can remove documentation about it, at least.
>

If the idea is to support any 7.n -> 7.m (where n < m) upgrade directly,
then it's IMHO time for 8.0 and clearly stating that 7.x -> 8.y only is
supported as 7.x -> 7.3 -> 8.0 -> 8.y and "you're on your own with any
other attempt".

Don't get this wrong, I am a big friend of easy upgrades. But I am not a
big friend of making improvements impossible by "backward compatibility
forever". It was the "backward compatibility" to CP/M-80 (v2.2) that
caused MS-DOS 7.0 to have a maximum commandline length of 127 characters
... that was taking compatibility too far. Well, M$ took it too far the
other way from there and is compatible to nothing any more, not even to
themself ... but at least they learned from that mistake.

Jan

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