Re: Regarding useObjects

On Wed, 27 Sept 2023 at 06:28, Achilleas Mantzios - cloud <
a(dot)mantzios(at)cloud(dot)gatewaynet(dot)com> wrote:

>
> On 9/27/23 13:17, Dave Cramer wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wed, 27 Sept 2023 at 06:07, Achilleas Mantzios - cloud <
> a(dot)mantzios(at)cloud(dot)gatewaynet(dot)com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On 9/27/23 12:55, Vladimir Sitnikov wrote:
>>
>> > So the problem with using float instead of Float is that it is
>> impossible to have a null float and arrays can have nulls.
>>
>> There's a feature request for retrieving primitive arrays:
>> https://github.com/pgjdbc/pgjdbc/issues/2939
>>
>> back in pre-postgresql-42* days we used to use -888 and -888.888 to
>> represent int NULL and float NULL respectively, quite ...primitive but it
>> worked. We should retain this old mapping , but once all systems are up to
>> date we will start storing and reading NULLs in arrays as NULLs.
>>
> Using that mapping is not something that we would entertain.
>
> If you are going to actually store NULL in the array, how would that work
> with primitives ?
>
> We support our central system (master) plus 120 slave systems
> communicating via satellites (running very old versions of everything ,
> linux, postgersql , java, jdbc, etc) using custom replication code (a hack
> of DBmirror) that we wrote back in 2003 or so. Data come back and forth, so
> we have to support all those 120 archaic slaves while we upgrade and after
> we upgrade the central system.
>
> When everything is up to date, (which will be some years from now), then
> we will start actually storing NULLs inside arrays instead of -888 and
> -888.888 . BUT even then, we are not willing to update the actual old data
> (-888) to the new NULL version, because that would trigger a massive
> replication traffic from our central system to the slaves. Also updating
> all past / historic values would cause bloating, huge autovacuum activity,
> among other things on those remote slaves that run unmanned (in simple
> english : I am the only DBA for all 1 + 120 postgresql instances) . So we
> should support historic data as they are, until something bigger happens
> (like a vast update in our topology/logic/etc).
>

So it sounds like this would work for you if someone implemented primitive
arrays.

Dave