On 02/09/14 12:46, Marko Tiikkaja wrote:
On 9/2/14 11:40 AM, Álvaro Hernández Tortosa wrote:
If we are to have another plpgsql-like language (like plpgsql2)
and
we could design it so it would attract many many users (let's not forget
that Oracle may have around two orders of magnitude more users than pg),
that would benefit us all greatly. Even if not perfect. Even if it is a
longer project which spans more than one release. But just having the
syntax (or most of it, maybe avoiding some complex unimplemented
postgres features, if that required a huge effort) is a big win.
Have you looked at
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/plpgsql-porting.html already?
Precisely this page shows some indications of examples of things
that could be done at a language level that would make it way easier to
port from PL/SQL (if you don't use that unsupported stuff). At least for
that, if the syntax is exactly the same, it could make things much more
comfortable (I'm not aiming for a 0-effort port, at least in first
place, but to get the 80% or 60% easier than now).
As far as I can tell, that already *is* the case as far as the
language goes. It seems to me that most of the stuff that's different
between the two are things that are out of the control of the language
(no autonomous transactions, function source code in a literal etc.)
Maybe it would be interesting to analyze:
- What it's impossible to have right now in postgres
- What can be implemented in a different way, but that would work in
postgres
- What could be somehow emulated
And adapt the syntax as much as possible to aim for the biggest
compatibility possible.
For 9.4, we have the media already saying "Postgres has NoSQL
capabilities" (which is only partially true). For x.y we could have the
media saying "Postgres adds Oracle compatibility" (which would be only
partially true). But that brings a lot of users to postgres, and that
helps us all.
This would be a horrible, horrible lie.
Certainly not more horrible than today's "PostgreSQL has NoSQL".
Despite that, I'm not saying I'd lie. I'd say what the media would say,
which is completely different.
If on the other hand we resign from attracting Oracle users, in a
moment where non-Oracle databases are fighting for them..... and we lose
here.... well, let's at least have a very compelling, attractive,
in-core, blessed, language. Even disliking it myself, PL/JavaScript
would be my #1 candidate there.
The best part about PL/PgSQL is the seamless integration with SQL.
You can put an SQL expression pretty much anywhere. How well would
that work if the "framework" was Javascript instead of the ADA-like
body that both PL/SQL and PL/PgSQL implement?
SQL integration is a must in a PL/* language, that's for sure. But
leveraging a well known language, tooling, and, specially, external
libraries/ecosystem is a much bigger win. Specially if all the languages
that I know of are capable (with more or less effort) to integrate SQL.
So maybe JavaScript with a way of integrating SQL would be preferable IMO.
Regards,
Álvaro
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