Re: Allowing postgresql to accept 0xff syntax for data types that it makes sense for?

Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> writes:
> My other question: is there a specific reason why PostgreSQL doesn't support
> this syntax, aside from "nobody has bothered to add such support"? Because
> I'm considering writing a patch to Postgres and submitting it, but I'm not
> going to go down that path if there's a specific reason why supporting this
> syntax would be _bad_. Personally, I feel like it would be a good thing, as
> it seems like a lot of other database systems support it, and even though
> it's not ANSI, it's pretty much the de-facto standard.

How many is "a lot", and do any of the responsible vendors sit on the SQL
standards committee?

One large concern about doing anything like this is whether future
versions of the SQL standard might blindside us with some
not-terribly-compatible interpretation of that syntax.  If we do something
that is also in Oracle or DB2 or one of the other big boys, then we can
probably rely on the assumption that they'll block anything really
incompatible from becoming standardized ;-).

OTOH, if the actual meaning of "a lot" is "MySQL", I'd be pretty worried
about this scenario.

            regards, tom lane