There's a whole lot of difference between the skill level needed to query the information_schema and find out things like table and column names, vs looking into pg_namespace, pg_class and pg_attribute plus understanding the specific info there to work out table and column names.
I reckon that having information "pre-prepared" in views like those in information_schema is "of course" going to be easier for people than "raw" information our internal catalogs.
Do you get where I'm coming from with this?
Yes, but I disagree. Your opinion is as an experienced user anyway, and you're just putting words in novice mouths...
That I directly disagree with. I'm putting forth the viewpoint of the people I work with here, who aren't PG experienced. They're Oracle experienced.
We've never had someone complain about querying stuff like that. For example, why do you need the comments on columns?
The "comment on columns" addition to the constraint_column_usage view was a suggestion for our particular environment, where it's easier for some of the Perl programmers to have one view that shows them all of the needed info.
I'm not super caring either if we add this stuff or not to PG, it was just a suggestion from the "trying to be helpful POV".
However, saying that people who aren't experienced with PG can easily (i.e. time efficiently) figure out how to query table and column names from PG by going through the pg_catalog stuff in comparison to things like information_schema.* is just not right.
One other benefit of having more stuff in information_schema.* is that the stuff there is "easier" to look at and figure out what it is. With the view definitions that are provided to things like psql and pgAdmin when people look at an information_schema view, it provides them a way of figuring out where in the internal tables stuff is if they want to look for it. i.e. they can find a column in information_schema.constraint_column_usage and go "gee where is that in the real PostgreSQL tables"? Then look at the code that generates it and so on.
:)
Regards and best wishes,
Justin Clift
Chris
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