Re: Confusing behavior of create table like

On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 8:59 AM Konstantin Knizhnik
<k(dot)knizhnik(at)postgrespro(dot)ru> wrote:
> May be generated and identity columns are good things. I have nothing
> against them.
> But what preventing us from providing the similar behavior for
> serial/bigseries types?

Backward compatibility seems like one good argument.

It kind of sucks that we end up with cases where new notions are
introduced to patch up the inadequacies of earlier ideas, but it's
also inevitable. If, after 25+ years of development, we didn't have
cases where somebody had come up with a new plan that was better than
the older plan, that would be pretty scary. We have to remember,
though, that there's a giant user community around PostgreSQL at this
point, and changing things like this can inconvenience large numbers
of those users. Sometimes that's worth it, but I find it pretty
dubious in a case like this. There's every possibility that there are
people out there who rely on the current behavior, and whose stuff
would break if it were changed.

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