Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> ... In more
> than ten years of working with PostgreSQL, I've never encountered
> where the restriction at issue here prevented a bug. It's only
> annoyed me and broken my application code (when moving from PostgreSQL
> 8.2 to PostgreSQL 8.3, never mind any other database!).
There are quite a few examples in our archives of application bugs that
would have been prevented, or later were prevented, by the 8.3 changes
that reduced the system's willingness to apply implicit casts to text.
I recall for instance cases where people got wrong/unexpected answers
because the system was sorting what-they-thought-were-timestamp values
textually.
So I find such sweeping claims to be demonstrably false, and I'm
suspicious of behavioral changes that are proposed with such arguments
backing them.
> There is ample evidence that I'm not the only one, but I think we have
> a clear consensus to continue ignoring the problem, or at least the
> solutions.
Oh, I don't think we're ignoring the problem; people beat us up about it
too often for that. But we need to pay attention to error detection not
only ease-of-use, so it's hard to be sure what's a net improvement.
regards, tom lane