Re: [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Use a bitmask to represent role attributes

On 12/23/2014 06:06 PM, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 11:34:09AM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
>> Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net> writes:
>>> If that's the only consideration for this, well, that's certainly quite
>>> straight-forward to change in the other direction too. The new function
>>> suggested by Andres actually makes it really easy to get a textual list
>>> of all the role attributes which a role has from the bitmask too.
>> We could have that regardless of the representation, if the function is
>> defined along the lines of "given a user OID, give me a text string
>> representing the user's attributes". However, that only helps for
>> pg_dumpall and any other clients whose requirement is exactly satisfied
>> by a string that fits into CREATE/ALTER USER. The current formatting
>> of psql's \du, for example, absolutely requires adding more client-side
>> code every time we add a property; whether the catalog representation is
>> bools or a bitmask really isn't going to change the pain level much there.
> I am with Tom on this --- there is more wasted space in the 'name'
> column pg_authid.rolname than by shoving 40 boolean values into a
> bitmap. Adding the complexity of a bitmap doesn't make sense here.
Well, the code simplification alone might be worth the effort... and it
does make adding additional attributes easier.

> I also apologize for the late feedback.
>
> Offtopic, what I would really _love_ to see improved is our display of
> object permissions:
>
> Access privileges
> Schema | Name | Type | Access privileges | Column privileges | Policies
> --------+--------+-------+---------------------------+-------------------+----------
> public | crypto | table | postgres=arwdDxt/postgres+| |
> | | | =r/postgres | |
>
> That is nasty user display --- it looks like line noise.

Hmm... http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/sql-grant.html does
describe the mapping from letters to permissions, but I agree that it
could be easier for beginners.
Any idea on how this display can be made more "human friendly"? (just
for the sake of discussion --- I don't think I have time to do much
about that, unfortunately)

Cheers,

/ J.L.