Re: [pgsql-general 2011-1-21:] Are there any projects interested in object functionality? (+ rule bases)

> o in the recent there are no efforts known to experiment with
> reference types, methods, or rule inference on top of PostgreSQL --
> advice that can be given mostly points to the given documented
> functionality

Correct, AFAIK.

> o extensions of PostgreSQL to support such a kind of usage have to be
> expected to be expected to be rejected from integration to the code base
> core -- i.e., if they are done, students have to be told «you can't
> expect this to become a part of PostgreSQL»

Not necessarily. We "rule out" *very* few things from PostgreSQL; I
think the TODO list only has 3 ideas which are contraindicated.

However, the warning is that this particular *set* of ideas has some
very high hurdles to jump before it could be considered seriously for
core, and that none of the existing committers seem interested in
helping with it. So the level of difficulty for the implementer would
be considerably greater than for many other patches of less invasiveness
and clearer apparent utility.

Among the hurdles are:
a. performance: you'd have to work out how to make nested object
resolution not take forever and burn up the CPUs
b. resolution: you'd need to come up with an object naming practice
which compliments, intead of conflicts with, the SQL-standard syntax
c. utility: you'd have to demonstrate why all this was actually useful.

> Is this understood correctly, especially the last point, or did
> Robert/Tom just specifically address syntactical conflicts (between
> schema and object semantics) with the point notation?

Syntactic conflicts are also significant, as anyone who's used EDB's
"packages" mod can tell you. So these would need to be worked out as
well, and NOT in a way which breaks backwards compatibility.

> Otherwise, the striking lack of academical initiatives in the area of OO
> and rule inference on top of PostgreSQL appears to me as a demand to

Hmmm. I don't know about that; I've never seen that academics *cared*
whether or not their code god into -core.

--
-- Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://www.pgexperts.com