> This solution can forever stop all discussion about styles that PG
> must/can support.
This is one thing I'm *not* certain about. The problems with a fully
general, templated formatting function for the backend include
1) It is easy to make a date/time template which *cannot* be used to
read data back in. So, for example, pg_dump could be fundamentally
broken just be this setting. Currently, input and output are always
compatible (more or less ;)
2) There may be a performance hit to *always* use a fully general
template for formatting.
3) If the template is used for output, it should probably be used for
input (to minimize the possibility of (1)). But then we would be able to
accept fewer date/time variations than we do now.
- Thomas