Tom Lane wrote: > I dug through the archives and found that we've had this discussion > before ;-). The basic argument for having the per-column form of > pg_get_indexdef do what it does was that it's unreasonable for > client-side code to try to disassemble an expression tree string, > whereas extracting opclass info is a relatively straightforward > exercise in joining. There are several past threads about this: > > http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2003-07/msg00083.php > http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2005-11/msg01106.php > http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2006-06/msg00576.php
Ah, that takes me back :-) > As of 8.3 that expands into also having to know the meaning of the > bits in indoption[], which is kind of annoying, but not even close > to being in the same league as reverse-compiling expressions. Agreed. > I think the current API expectation for pg_get_indexdef is that > it produces only the index column/expression, and that we are > very likely to break client-side code if we change that. I'm sure there are far more catalog/API changes that'll affect any app likely to be using this form of pg_get_indexdef, but I can live without adding another. > I don't have any objection to providing an additional new API that > includes the opclass and ASC/DESC decoration in the output ... other > than that I think it's a bit too late for 8.3; adding a function > would mean forcing initdb, and I don't see any reasonable way to > shoehorn two behaviors into the existing function signature. Agreed - now is not the time to be adding new functions. > Just out of curiosity, why is pgAdmin doing it this way at all? > Seems it would be a lot easier to use the all-columns form of > pg_get_indexdef than to cons up the display from fetches of each > column individually. We use the data in various UI elements as well as for reverse engineering the SQL - it's easier to get it broken down than to parse it back out of the complete definition. /D ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
