Re: Proposal to use JSON for Postgres Parser format

On Tue, Sep 20, 2022 at 7:59 AM Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>
> Michel Pelletier <pelletier(dot)michel(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> > I would like to propose a discussion that in a future major release
> > Postgres switch from this custom format to JSON.
>
> There are certainly reasons to think about changing the node tree
> storage format; but if we change it, I'd like to see it go to something
> more compact not more verbose. JSON doesn't fit our needs all that
> closely, so some things like bitmapsets would become a lot longer;
> and even where the semantics are pretty-much-the-same, JSON's
> insistence on details like quoting field names will add bytes.
> Perhaps making the physical storage be JSONB not JSON would help that
> pain point. It's still far from ideal though.
>
> Maybe a compromise could be found whereby we provide a conversion
> function that converts whatever the catalog storage format is to
> some JSON equivalent. That would address the needs of external
> code that doesn't want to write a custom parser, while not tying
> us directly to JSON.
>

I think the DDL deparsing stuff that is being discussed as a base for
DDL logical replication provides something like what you are saying
[1][2].

[1] - https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CAFPTHDaqqGxqncAP42Z%3Dw9GVXDR92HN-57O%3D2Zy6tmayV2_eZw%40mail.gmail.com
[2] - https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CAAD30U%2BpVmfKwUKy8cbZOnUXyguJ-uBNejwD75Kyo%3DOjdQGJ9g%40mail.gmail.com

--
With Regards,
Amit Kapila.