Christopher Kings-Lynne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> Please provide example cases.

> create view v1 as select 1;
> create view v2 as select 1 + (select * from v1);
> create or replace view v1 as select * from v2;

> It seems to me that the only way to solve that one is to dump 'view 
> shells'.

Hm.  As of CVS tip, what you'll get is a complaint along the lines of

$ pg_dump circle >outfile
pg_dump: [sorter] WARNING: could not resolve dependency loop among these items:
pg_dump: [sorter]   TABLE v1  (ID 1111 OID 920137)
pg_dump: [sorter]   RULE _RETURN  (ID 1174 OID 920139)
pg_dump: [sorter]   TABLE v2  (ID 1112 OID 920140)
pg_dump: [sorter]   RULE _RETURN  (ID 1175 OID 920142)

and a dump that orders the two views arbitrarily.  We can certainly add
code to do something different, but are there any real-world cases where
this is needed?  The above example seems more than slightly made-up.
The views aren't actually functional anyway (trying to use either would
result in an "infinite recursion" error).  Can you show me a non-broken
situation where pg_dump needs to resort to view shells?

>> Postgres has always allowed you to shoot yourself in the foot by
>> manually diddling the system catalogs.  I place this in the "if it
>> hurts, don't do it" category ...

> Is there any reason for us to still allow that?  What is there left that 
> requires manual twiddling?

Getting out of unpleasant situations, perhaps.  I would very much resist
any attempt to forbid that --- we're a long way from being so certain of
ourselves as to say that no one should ever hack the catalogs.

> Also shouldn't we really separate out the 'can modify catalogs manually' 
> privilege from the 'superuser' privilege?

See pg_shadow.usecatupd.  This could stand to be better supported maybe
(like with ALTER USER support)?

                        regards, tom lane

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