I tend to agree with Peter: if dblink is going to start depending on stuff outside Postgres, it ought to be become a separate project, if only to simplify distribution and configuration issues.
Perhaps it could be split into two parts, a PG-specific part and a cross-DBMS part?
regards, tom lane
PS: Has anyone looked any further at the SQL-MED standard? ISTM that's where we ought to head in the long run.
I think for that very reason (SQL-MED) we need to come to terms with this issue. If/when connections to external data sources is in the backend, you'll have those exact same dependencies. And in fact, we do today: consider '--with-openssl' or '--with-tcl'.
I had always assumed we would need '--with-oracle', '--with-jdbc', etc (or whatever you want to call them) to support backend connections to external sources. And this discussion is the very reason I was hesitant to pursue dblink_ora or jdbclink now, because I didn't think people would be comfortable with configure options to support a contrib library.
Joe
---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 7: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
