On 01/09/14 23:46, David G Johnston wrote:
Álvaro Hernández Tortosa wrote
On 01/09/14 21:52, Joel Jacobson wrote:
On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 8:34 PM, Álvaro Hernández Tortosa <
aht@
> wrote:
What I can add is that, if Postgres is to devote resources to a new
language, I would plan it with a broader scope. What would attract most
users? Would it bring non postgres users to Postgres? What could be one
of
the killer features of any next version? My trivial answer to most of
these
questions is: PL/SQL. I don't know with detail how complex this is to
get in
Postgres (well, EDB probably knows), but if I had to chose a new
language,
this is it. So my questions would rather be:
Interesting visionary ideas.
For me personally, I have no Oracle functions to port to Postgres, so
all differences
between PL/SQL and PL/pgSQL would just be unnecessary extra amount of
work
in the process of porting existing code into a new language, be it
PL/SQL or PL/pgSQL 2.
That said, if PL/SQL wouldn't suffer from the problems I have with
PL/pgSQL today,
I wouldn't see a problem writing new code in the language, but then I
would probably
never manage to port all existing code to PL/SQL and I would be stuck
with a mix of code
in two languages instead of one. With PL/pgSQL 2 on the other hand, it
would be feasible
to eventually port all my existing code, as most of it would be
compatible without changes
and the rest would easy to make compatible.
I guess it's a question of if it's more important to recruit Oracle
users,
or if it's more important to improve the life of existing PL/pgSQL
Postgres users.
I agree that for you, unfortunately, plpgsql2 would be better than
PL/SQL. However, I believe as a whole a bigger majority of users would
be benefited from this.
Is it even legal for us to create PL/SQL?
Honestly, I don't know. But I don't think so. And if it is, be it.
Let's have Oracle sue us (who?)
Beyond that in all likelihood having both a version two of the pl/pgsql
language and the pl/SQL language would be a desireable outcome for, say, a
10.0 release.
If 10.0 is to follow 9.5, I'd agree. Althouth I'd also agree for
any earlier, if that would be possible.
The former simply because languages by their very nature are evolutionary
and at some point the lost productivity of suppressing such evolution in the
name of backward compatibility will be deemed undesirable. It may be
desirable to simply call the new language pl/elephant instead pl/pgsql2 but
the fundamental reason for evolving a language in order to incorporate newly
acquired knowledge is unarguable. Though in this case the entire
language/extension mechanism should be considered and not just the specific
procedural-SQL language we are dealing with here.
The goal of adding PL/SQL would be to increase the user base of the project
and hopefully attract new blood to the development team in order to maximize
long-term survivability and increase the pace of innovation. We would be
unable to introduce substantial evolution to this language for that very
reason and so a different language is likely to be needed - eventually.
That's what I think. Increasing the user base, in a moment where
for many reasons we all know many want to migrate off of Oracle... let's
bring them here before they move to something else, with also piles of
money and great marketing capabilities....
Álvaro
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