On 05/01/2013 06:14 PM, David Fetter wrote: > On Wed, May 01, 2013 at 11:12:28AM -0400, Tom Lane wrote: >> David Fetter <da...@fetter.org> writes: >>> According to SQL:2003 and SQL:2008 (and the draft standard, if >>> that matters) in section 5.2 of Foundation, both NEW and OLD are >>> reserved words, so we're going to need to re-reserve them to >>> comply. >> >> We don't and won't. > > Not so fast or so definite, if you please. > > I've got a GSoC project in that implements things with both of these > keywords, and doubtless others will use other keywords either this > coming (9.4) cycle or in a later one.
past history has shown that this is relatively rare and almost always it was possible to find a way around - not sure why we need to panic in advance? > > If you want to have a discussion about the timing, that is a perfectly > reasonable discussion to have. Peremptorily saying, "don't and won't" > is not a great way to operate, however tempting it may be for you. > > There is a case to be made, and I'm making it here, for pre-reserving > all the keywords and erroring out with "Feature not implemented" for > those not yet implemented. This would keep us, and more importantly > our user base, from wondering when the next random change to the SQL > language would affect them. as per the discussion on IRC - this would break applications left and right for no real reason and no good, and I don't think hypothetical features that have not even fully discused warrant anything like that. Also this would be an uphill battle for no good (ie every few years when a new spec comes out we break apps for a feature we might geht 10 years later?) > > I'd suggest doing this over about 3 releases in the sense of warning > people at the appropriate juncture--I'm guessing at least CREATE, > ALTER, pg_dump(all) and pg_upgrade would be involved. Three releases > is just a suggestion intended to start a discussion. > >> There are very many other keywords that are less reserved in >> Postgres than in the spec; this is a good thing. > > How is it a good thing? Help me understand. why is breaking random applications or making it harder for people to migrate from other databases without any reason a good thing? Stefan -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
