Re: JSON for PG 9.2

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 8:38 AM, Pavel Stehule <pavel(dot)stehule(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> I don't understand why we have to do it?
>
> We don't support similar functionality for XML, so why for JSON?

Hrm. Well, that's an interesting point. Maybe we don't. I assumed
that people would eventually want to optimize queries of the form
SELECT whatever FROM tab WHERE jsoncol = 'constant'. If that's a
sufficiently marginal use case that we don't care, then fine.

One difference between JSON and XML is that XML really has no
well-defined comparison semantics. For example, consider:

<foo><bar>1.0</bar></foo>
<foo><bar>1.0</bar> </foo>

If the XML is being used as a transport mechanism, then the extra
space is semantically insignificant, but if this is markup, then it
might matter a lot. Also, consider:

<foo><bar>1.00</bar></foo>

That one might be equal if we think 1.0 is intended to be a number,
but if it's intended as a string then it's not. We could perhaps do
comparisons in XML relative to some DTD or schema if those provide
details about what the values mean, but in a vacuum it's not
well-defined. On the other hand, in JSON, it's pretty clear that { 1,
2, 3 } is the same value as {1,2,3} but "1,2,3" is different from "1,
2, 3". There are some borderline cases that might need some sweat,
like whether 1 = 1.0 = 1.00 = 1e0, but in general the level of
ambiguity seems to me to be much less, making it more feasible here
than it would be for XML.

That having been said, uncertainties about whether we want this at all
(and if so in what form) are exactly why I didn't include this kind of
stuff in the patch to begin with, and I think that if we get this much
committed for 9.2 we'll be doing pretty well. If we can agree on and
do more, great; if not, we'll at least have this much, which IMHO
would be an improvement over what we have now.

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