Re: Add generate_series(date,date) and generate_series(date,date,integer)

From: Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: "David G(dot) Johnston" <david(dot)g(dot)johnston(at)gmail(dot)com>
Cc: Simon Riggs <simon(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>, Michael Paquier <michael(dot)paquier(at)gmail(dot)com>, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>, Corey Huinker <corey(dot)huinker(at)gmail(dot)com>, Tomas Vondra <tomas(dot)vondra(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>, Christoph Berg <myon(at)debian(dot)org>, David Fetter <david(at)fetter(dot)org>, Torsten Zuehlsdorff <mailinglists(at)toco-domains(dot)de>, PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: Add generate_series(date,date) and generate_series(date,date,integer)
Date: 2016-03-10 18:45:16
Message-ID: CA+TgmoZLqvOAY86txXbX5c9-YnAG_mcWERphqsBdL5xi=9=oOw@mail.gmail.com
Views: Raw Message | Whole Thread | Download mbox | Resend email
Thread:
Lists: pgsql-hackers

On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 11:33 AM, David G. Johnston
<david(dot)g(dot)johnston(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> I tend to think we err toward this too much. This seems like development
> concerns trumping usability. Consider that anything someone took the time
> to write and polish to make committable to core was obviously genuinely
> useful to them - and for every person capable of actually taking things that
> far there are likely many more like myself who cannot but have encountered
> the, albeit minor, usability annoyance that this kind of function seeks to
> remove.

Sure, an individual function like this has almost no negative impact.
On the other hand, working around its absence is also trivial. You
can create a wrapper function that does exactly this in a couple of
lines of SQL. In my opinion, saying that people should do that in
they need it has some advantages over shipping it to everyone. If you
don't have it and you want it, you can easily get it. But what if you
have it and you don't want it, for example because what you really
want is a minimal postgres installation? You can't take anything in
core back out again, or at least not easily. Everything about core is
expanding very randomly - code size, shared memory footprint, all of
it. If you think that has no downside for users, I respectfully
disagree.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

In response to

Responses

Browse pgsql-hackers by date

  From Date Subject
Next Message Tom Lane 2016-03-10 18:48:31 Re: WIP: Upper planner pathification
Previous Message Masahiko Sawada 2016-03-10 18:41:55 Re: Freeze avoidance of very large table.