It's out of date and I did not receive any feedback on it (so I assume
it's not very useful), but the patch submitted in late February would
easily allow the described 'translation' to occur.
Summary:
Schema in backend translates a \<command> <arg> command into an sql
query which is then to be executed. Logic is still in psql, but the
available commands and how data is retrieved from the schema was backend
specific.
I'm using it here due to it's ability to add new psql commands (since
it's just data in a table.)
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-patches/2003-02/msg00216.php
Anyway, might be useful for thoughts. Simply moving the commands into
the backend still leaves us with unsupported new commands in old clients
or new commands in old databases (leaving errors) unless the SHOW ...
syntax itself is handled by the backend.
> :-/ Yeah, I've been following that from a distance and I'm not so wild
> about that. I really like that the information_schema has been
> integrated into the base, but translating the SHOW commands into
> SELECTs from information_schema on the backend seems like a bad idea
> unless its going to be done abstract enough via some kind of rewrite
> engine that allows users to program the database to translate their
> verbiage into SQL (ex: KILL -> DROP, GET -> SELECT), which could be
> kinda fun.
--
Rod Taylor <rbt@rbt.ca>
PGP Key: http://www.rbt.ca/rbtpub.asc