On 24 March 2016 at 23:13, Vladimir Sitnikov <sitnikov.vladi...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> >doesn't have any kind of capabilities negotiation
>
> Do you think capability negotiation should indeed be at the protocol level?
> What's wrong with say "select * from backend_capabilities" at the
> connection setup?
>

(Kinda a side-track, but):

Because that's too late. When we eventually do a v4 protocol it needs a way
to say, during initial handshake, what the server and client support, so
the server won't send any protocol messages to the client that it can't
understand and vice versa.

The simplest form is "I <server> speak protocol 4.4", "I <client> speak
protocol 4.1", "OK, lets use protocol 4.1 and the server won't send you
anything that might confuse you from 4.2, 4.3, or 4.4."

Much better is for the client to connect with "I <client> understand
GSSAPI, lazily fetched LOBs, STARTTLS, and wire-level compression" and the
server to say "I understand GSSAPI, wire-level compression, per-datum
charsets and database-switching", so they know to agree on using GSSAPI and
wire-level compression. Neither will send the other stuff it won't
understand that could land up breaking it.

Right now we've really got no way to add additional data to query
responses, commandcomplete, etc, because we've got no way to make sure the
client can cope with it being there.

See also https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Todo#Wire_Protocol_Changes

-- 
 Craig Ringer                   http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
 PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services

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