On Jul 16, 2010, at 8:11 AM, Simon Riggs wrote: > On Fri, 2010-07-16 at 14:07 +0100, Thom Brown wrote: > >> The problem is people are stating different requirements. >> >> - to make it easy for new users of psql >> - to simplify fetching basic database information from any client application >> - to ease transition between MySQL and PostgreSQL > > Close, but I didn't state any of those as you have them. > > I want to make it easy for newbies to get access to obvious things like > a list of tables, from *any* interactive application, wherever they > exist. There are many and various apps and not all of them work the > same. (The Windows installer ships two, for example). It would be nice > to tell people "just type SHOW TABLES" and have it be true 100% of the > time. They can remember that, or at least will try it if they can't > remember anything at all about our RDBMS.
In pretty much any GUI application the expected way to see a list of tables is not going to involve typing anything anywhere. Either the list of tables is going to be shown all the time (common) or there'll be a menu or toolbar option to show them. There may not be anywhere obvious to type in a command, and if there is the output of a server-side implementation of show tables would likely be displayed like the contents of a table, rather than as names of tables - so all the metadata is going to be off. Things like the context menu for each row of the result having operations for modifying the contents of a table, rather than the operations for modifying a table. It'll offer DML operations where you'd expect, and want, DDL in other words. Cheers, Steve -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
