Re: [PATCH] Add CANONICAL option to xmlserialize

Jim Jones <jim.jones@uni-muenster.de> writes:
> This patch introduces the CANONICAL option to xmlserialize, which
> serializes xml documents in their canonical form - as described in
> the W3C Canonical XML Version 1.1 specification. This option can
> be used with the additional parameter WITH [NO] COMMENTS to keep
> or remove xml comments from the canonical xml output.

While I don't object to providing this functionality in some form,
I think that doing it with this specific syntax is a seriously
bad idea.  I think there's significant risk that at some point
the SQL committee will either standardize this syntax with a
somewhat different meaning or standardize some other syntax for
the same functionality.

How about instead introducing a plain function along the lines of
"xml_canonicalize(xml, bool keep_comments) returns text" ?  The SQL
committee will certainly never do that, but we won't regret having
created a plain function whenever they get around to doing something
in the same space.

            regards, tom lane