On Fri, 14 Dec 2018 at 22:24, Robert Haas <robertmh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> So essentially I think supporting special values like infinity boils > down to trading away some small amount of performance -- more likely > to be noticeable with JIT -- for some amount of possible programmer > convenience. Some people may think that's a good trade, and other > people may not like it. It just depends on whether the 'infinity' > value is useful to you. If it is, you'll probably like the trade, > because aside from the notational cost which Isaac mentioned, it's > probably vastly faster to handle the infinity values in C code than to > stick CASE..WHEN in to an SQL query. If it's not, you may dislike it. > If your application code now has to know about the possibility > 'infinity' value that it otherwise wouldn't have to worry about, you > may dislike it for that reason also. > > I'm not sure there's one right answer here - my personal feeling is > that infinite values are a wart, but I grant Isaac's point that they > can sometimes simplify SQL coding. > I have no objection to the introduction of another datatype that is stripped down for performance. I understand and agree with that need. But the current datatypes do handle much complexity already. Blocking this proposal would not change that, IMHO. All that is being proposed is a small change to rationalize the existing code. -- Simon Riggs http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/ <http://www.2ndquadrant.com/> PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services
