> > You can also use the pg_tables view, for example, and the system
> > catalogs for the rest (pg_database, pg_attribute).
>
> > Anyway, there's little use for SHOW queries, as you can always poke into
> > the system catalogs. That's something you can't do in MySQL, and is the
> > reason for the SHOW hack.
>
> If we actually implement anything new in this line, it will presumably
> be the SQL-standard-compliant INFORMATION_SCHEMA views. Although as
> far as I can see, those have nothing to recommend them except standards
> compliance :-(. "SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES" doesn't seem
> to have any great advantage over either "\d" or whatever the equivalent
> MySQL SHOW command is...
Except that it's awfully hard to do a "\d" if you're not in psql. To get a
list of tables I had to use "psql -E" to figure out the query so that I
could perform the query myself. The real advantage of a view to me would be
if any changes are made to the system catalog that would 'break' the query,
it would be handled transparently by changing the view.
Greg