Re: [HACKERS] COPY view

Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote:
> Bruce Momjian wrote:
>
>> Tom Lane wrote:
>>
>>> Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> writes:
>>>
>>>> OK, based on this feedback, I am adding COPY VIEW to the patches queue.
>>>>
>>> I think we have other things that demand our attention more than a
>>> half-baked feature.
>>>
>> Well, the patch was submitted in time, and it is a desired feature. If
>> we want to hold it for 8.3 due to lack of time, we can, but I don't
>> think we can decide now that it must wait.
>>
>
>
> well I thought the agreed approach to that was allowing COPY from
> arbitrary expressions without the need to go through the extra CREATE
> VIEW step?
>
>
>

Well, it's been a bit of a mess, unfortunately, and I can understand
people feeling aggrieved.

I think there is general agreement that we want to be able to do:

COPY (SELECT ... ) TO ...

When we have that it would not be unreasonable to have a special case
for views which would transparently rewrite

COPY VIEWNAME TO

as

COPY (SELECT * FROM VIEWNAME) TO

So we would not necessarily be adopting a feature we don't want in the
long run, from a user visibility angle.

The issue seems to be that in adopting the present patch we would be
incorporating some code we will essentially have to abandon when we get
the feature we all really want, and which we hope will be available for
8.3. On that basis I can certainly appreciate Tom's reluctance to adopt
the patch.

It's a close call. On balance I'd be inclined to accept the patch if it
reviews OK, even though we will throw the code away soon (we hope).

cheers

andrew