Re: COPY (query) TO file

Mark Woodward wrote:
>>>> Allow COPY to output from views
>>>> Another idea would be to allow actual SELECT statements in a COPY.
>>>>
>>>> Personally I strongly favor the second option as being more flexible
>>>> than the first.
>>>
>>> I second that - allowing arbitrary SELECT statements as a COPY source
>>> seems much more powerful and flexible than just supporting COPY FROM
>>> VIEW.
>> Not to be a sour apple or anything but I don't see how any of this is
>> needed in the backend since we can easily use Psql to do it, or pretty
>> much any other tool.
>
> There is an important difference between a capability in the backend vs
> one synthesized in the frontend.
>

To be clear, I am not suggesting that we implement COPY TO *in* the
client. I am suggesting I don't see the purpose of COPY TO when we can
just use the psql query capability to achieve the same thing.

In talking with Andrew he is saying there is overhead in pulling these
types of result sets through the client but people that are using this
feature... won't they be connecting remotely anyway ?

I mean... why are we using COPY TO on the same server? what purpose does
it serve? What I see COPY TO for is an fast way to pull out bulk reports
or something like that... all of which I am NOT going to do on the server.

Joshua D. Drake

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