Re: SHOW CREATE

On Fri, Jul 5, 2019 at 12:32 PM David Fetter <david(at)fetter(dot)org> wrote:

> Folks,
>
> Corey Huinker put together the documentation for this proposed
> feature. Does this seem like a reasonable way to do it?
>
>
In doing that work, it became clear that the command was serving two
masters:
1. A desire to see the underlying nuts and bolts of a given database object.
2. A desire to essentially make the schema portion of pg_dump a server side
command.

To that end, I see splitting this into two commands, SHOW CREATE and SHOW
DUMP.

SHOW DUMP would the original command minus the object type and object name
specifier, and it would dump the entire current database as seen from the
current user (again, no data).

SHOW CREATE would still have all the object_type parameters as before, but
would only dump the one specified object, plus any dependent objects
specified in the WITH options (comments, grants, indexes, constraints,
partitions, all).

Please note that any talk of a server side DESCRIBE is separate from this.
That would be a series of commands that would have result sets tailored to
the object type, and each one would be an inherent compromise between
completeness and readability.

I'd like to hear what others have to say, and incorporate that feedback
into a follow up proposal.