On Mon, 2003-01-13 at 11:28, greg@turnstep.com wrote:
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> > Wouldn't it be easier (and more portable, see 7.3/7.2 system catalogs vs.
> > psql) to have views for that? Do I miss a point here?
>
> Putting the \d commands into views has been on the TODO list for a long time:
> I think it is actually the only psql-related item left, until we change
> the backend protocol to indicate transaction state. I don't think a view
> would have helped with the psql 7.2/7.3 change: a lot more changed than
> simply the underlying SQL.
>
> Some of the the backslash commands are not amenable to putting inside a
> view, as they actually compromise multiple SQL calls and some logic in
> the C code, but a few could probably be made into views. Could whomever
> added that particular TODO item expand on this?
>
One idea I've always thought would be nice would be to make full fledged
C functions out of the \ commands and ship them with the database. This
way the \ commands could just be alias to "select myfunc()". This would
help out all of us who write GUI interfaces since we would have standard
functions we could call upon, and would also help with backward
compatibility since \dv could always call select list_views(), which
would already be included with each server. One of the reasons that this
was not feasible in the past was that we needed functions that could
return multiple rows and columns easily. Now that we have that in 7.3,
it might be worth revisiting.
Robert Treat