Re: get rid of SQL_ASCII?

On Thu, Sep 05, 2013 at 08:47:32AM -0400, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Can we consider getting rid of the SQL_ASCII server-side "encoding"? I
> don't see any good use for it, and it's often a support annoyance, and
> it leaves warts all over the code. This would presumably be a
> multi-release effort.
>
> As a first step in accommodating users who have existing SQL_ASCII
> databases, we could change SQL_ASCII into a real encoding with
> conversion routines to all other encodings that only convert 7-bit ASCII
> characters. That way, users who use SQL_ASCII as real ASCII or don't
> care could continue to use it. Others would be forced to either set
> SQL_ASCII as the client encoding or adjust the encoding on the server.
>
> On the client side, the default libpq client "encoding" SQL_ASCII would
> be renamed to something like SAME or whatever, so the behavior would
> stay the same.
>
> Other ideas? Are there legitimate uses for SQL_ASCII?
>
Hi Peter,

Yes, we have processes that insert data from a large number of locales
into the same database and we need to process the information in a locale
agnostic way, just a a range of bytes. Not to mention how much faster it
can be.

Regards,
Ken