On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 11:33 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
>> On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 10:48 AM, Noah Misch <noah@leadboat.com> wrote:
>>> FWIW, the term "stand-alone composite type" appears twice in our documentation.
>
>> Hmm, OK. Anyone else have an opinion on the relative merits of:
>
>> ERROR: type stuff is not a composite type
>> vs.
>> ERROR: type stuff is not a stand-alone composite type
>
>> The intent of adding "stand-alone" was, I believe, to clarify that it
>> has to be a CREATE TYPE stuff AS ... type, not just a row type (that
>> is, naturally, composite, in some less-pure sense). I'm not sure
>> whether the extra word actually makes it more clear, though.
>
> In 99.9% of the code and docs, a table rowtype is a perfectly good
> composite type. I agree with Noah that just saying "composite type"
> is inadequate here; but I'm not sure that "stand-alone" is a helpful
> adjective either. What about inverting the message phrasing, ie
>
> ERROR: type stuff must not be a table's row type
It also can't be a view's row type, a sequence's row type, a foreign
table's row type...
--
Robert Haas
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