Re: BUG #5218: Easy strategic feature requests

On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 12:28 PM, Pavel Stehule <pavel(dot)stehule(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>>
>> Rather than trying to be compatible with MySQL directly, I think we
>> might be better off adding a chapter to our documentation explaining
>> to ex-MySQL users how to accomplish the same things in PostgreSQL.  We
>> might even think about adding a contrib module with user-defined
>> functions like show_databases(), show_tables(), describe(text), so
>> that someone could do SELECT describe('foo'); and get a familiar sort
>> of output.
>>
>
> I thing so ex-MySQL needs exact DESCRIBE, exact SHOW statement. It is
> some, what they used long time and then they missing it.

Well, if people aren't willing to make ANY changes to their code or
habits when porting to a new database, they're likely hosed no matter
what we do about this particular issue. That having been said, I
wouldn't personally strongly object to implementing these commands as
a convenience for MySQL users, but I suspect others will consider them
unnecessary warts, which in some sense they are.

> Hypothetically we could have a "super hook" on server side - or hook
> on psql and we can implement these statements in some contrib module.

With all respect, I think this is quite similar to several things
you've proposed previously that have been rejected. At least, I
believe it suffers from many of the same problems.

...Robert