This is very interesting. I love docstrings in Lisp and Python and Javadoc in Java.
Basically this is like that, but for SQL. Very helpful. On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 11:48 AM, John Omernik <[email protected]> wrote: > I am looking for discussion here. A colleague was asking me how to add > comments to the metadata of a view. (He's new to Drill, thus the idea of > not having metadata for a table is one he's warming up to). > > That got me thinking... why couldn't we use Drill Views to store > table/field comments? This could be a great way to help add contextual > information for users. Here's some current observations when I issue a > describe view_myview > > > 1. I get three columns ,COLUMN_NAME, DATA_TYPE, and IS_NULLABLE > 2. Even thought the underlying parquet table has types, the view does not > pass the types for the underlying parquet files through. (The type is ANY) > 3. The data for the view is all just a json file that could be easily > extended. > > > So, a few things would be a nice to have > > 1. Table comments. when I issue a describe table, if the view has a > "Description" field, then having that print out as a description for the > whole view would be nice. This is harder, I think because it's not just > extending the view information. > > 2. Column comments: A text field that could be added to the view, and just > print out another column with description. This would be very helpful. > While Drill being schemaless is awesome, the ability to add information to > known data, is huge. > > 3. Ability to to use the types from the Parquet files (without manually > specifying each type). If we could provide an option to View creation to > attempt to infer type, that would be handy. I realize that folks are using > the LIMIT 0 to get metadata, but describe could be done well too. > > 4. Ability, using ANSI Sql to update the view column descriptions and the > description for the view itself. > > 5. I believe Avro has the ability to add this information to the files, so > if the data exists outside of views (such as in AVRO files) should we > present it to the user in describe table events as well? > > Curious if folks think this would be valuable, how much work an addition > like this would be to Drill, and other thoughts in general. > > > John >
