Andreas Pflug <pgadmin@pse-consulting.de> writes:
> The attached patch implements COPY ... WITH [BINARY] COMPRESSION
> (compression implies BINARY). The copy data uses bit 17 of the flag
> field to identify compressed data.
I think this is a pretty horrid idea, because it changes pg_lzcompress
from an unimportant implementation detail into a backup file format
that we have to support till the end of time. What happens if, say,
we need to abandon pg_lzcompress because we find out it has patent
problems?
It *might* be tolerable if we used gzip instead, but I really don't see
the argument for doing this inside the server at all: piping to gzip
seems like a perfectly acceptable solution, quite possibly with higher
performance than doing it all in a single process (which isn't going
to be able to use more than one CPU).
I don't see the argument for restricting it to binary only, either.
regards, tom lane