Re: Re: proposal - psql: possibility to specify sort for describe commands, when size is printed

On Fri, Mar 10, 2017 at 5:16 PM, Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net> wrote:

> * Peter Eisentraut (peter(dot)eisentraut(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com) wrote:
> > On 2/24/17 16:32, Pavel Stehule wrote:
> > > set EXTENDED_DESCRIBE_SORT size_desc
> > > \dt+
> > > \l+
> > > \di+
> > >
> > > Possible variants: schema_table, table_schema, size_desc, size_asc
> >
> > I can see this being useful, but I think it needs to be organized a
> > little better.
> >
> > Sort key and sort direction should be separate settings.
> >
> > I'm not sure why we need to have separate settings to sort by schema
> > name and table name. But if we do, then we should support that for all
> > object types. I think maybe that's something we shouldn't get into
> > right now.
> >
> > So I would have one setting for sort key = {name|size} and on for sort
> > direction = {asc|desc}.
>
> Perhaps I'm trying to be overly cute here, but why not let the user
> simply provide a bit of SQL to be put at the end of the query?
>
> That is, something like:
>
> \pset EXTENDED_DESCRIBE_ORDER_LIMIT 'ORDER BY 5 DESC LIMIT 10'
>

I think that's the question of usability. After all, one can manually type
corresponding SQL instead of \d* commands. However, it's quite cumbersome
to do this every time.
I found quite useful to being able to switch between different sortings
quickly. For instance, after seeing tables sorted by name, user can
require them sorted by size descending, then sorted by size ascending,
etc...
Therefore, I find user-defined SQL clause to be cumbersome. Even psql
variable itself seems to be cumbersome for me.
I would propose to add sorting as second optional argument to \d*
commands. Any thoughts?

------
Alexander Korotkov
Postgres Professional: http://www.postgrespro.com
The Russian Postgres Company