Re: Listen / Notify rewrite

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 8:44 PM, Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com> wrote:
> On 11/12/09 8:30 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
>> So while a payload string for NOTIFY has been on the to-do list since
>> forever, I have to think that Greg's got a good point questioning
>> whether it is actually a good idea.
>
> Sure, people will abuse it as a queue.  But people abuse arrays when
> they should be using child tables, use composite types to make data
> non-atomic, and use dblink when they really should be using schema.
> Does the potential for misuse mean that we should drop the features?  No.

I agree. We frequently reject features on the basis that someone
might do something stupid with them. It's lame and counterproductive,
and we should stop. The world contains infinite amounts of lameness,
but that's the world's problem, not ours. There is zero evidence that
this feature is only useful for stupid purposes, and some evidence
(namely, the opinions of esteemed community members) that it is useful
for at least some non-stupid purposes.

...Robert