On Mon, 12 Jul 1999, Tom Lane wrote:
> Ryan Bradetich <rbrad@hpb50023.boi.hp.com> writes:
> > psql declares the the type to be view? if the relkind is a relation
> > and the relhasrules = true in pg_class for that entry. I will pull
> > the latest source and see if I can come up with a better way for
> > determining the type tomorrow, if someone else doesn't beat me to it
>
> The way Jan explained it to me, a view *is* a table that happens to
> have an "on select do instead" rule attached to it. If the table
> has data in it (which it normally wouldn't) you can't see that data
> anyway because of the select rule.
Does anyone else see a problem with this? This sort of approach almost
prevents views with distinct, union, order by, etc. from ever being
implemented.
I don't know what other people use their views for but I use them to store
complicated queries. So, in essence it would suffice to store the text of
the query with a view rather than faking tables for it, thus confusing all
sorts of utility programs.
Then again, I'd be interested to know what to developers' idea of normal
usage of a view is.
--
Peter Eisentraut
PathWay Computing, Inc.