Re: Bootstrap DATA is a pita

Caleb Welton wrote:
> I'm happy working these ideas forward if there is interest.
> 
> Basic design proposal is:
>   - keep a minimal amount of bootstrap to avoid intrusive changes to core
> components
>   - Add capabilities of creating objects with specific OIDs via DDL during
> initdb
>   - Update the caching/resolution mechanism for builtin functions to be
> more dynamic.
>   - Move as much of bootstrap as possible into SQL files and create catalog
> via DDL

I think the point we got stuck last time at was deciding on a good
format for the data coming from the DATA lines.  One of the objections
raised for formats such as JSON is that it's trivial for "git merge" (or
similar tools) to make a mistake because object-end/object-start lines
are all identical.  And as for the SQL-format version, the objection was
that it's hard to modify the lines en-masse when modifying the catalog
definition (new column, etc).  Ideally we would like a format that can
be bulk-edited without too much trouble.

A SQL file would presumably not have the merge issue, but mass-editing
would be a pain.

Crazy idea: we could just have a CSV file which can be loaded into a
table for mass changes using regular DDL commands, then dumped back from
there into the file.  We already know how to do these things, using
\copy etc.  Since CSV uses one line per entry, there would be no merge
problems either (or rather: all merge problems would become conflicts,
which is what we want.)

-- 
Álvaro Herrera                http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
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