Re: PL/pgSQL 2

* Robert Haas (robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com) wrote:
> Second, if you did manage to develop something which was significantly
> more compatible with Oracle than PostgreSQL or PL/pgsql is today,
> you'd probably find that the community wouldn't accept it.

Agreed. Moving PostgreSQL forward is what the community is interested
in- not duplicating what another database product has for the strict
goal of easing migrations from those databases (be it Oracle or MSSQL or
MySQL).

> To take another example, I've been complaining about the fact
> that PostgreSQL 8.3+ requires far more typecasts in stored procedures
> than any other database I'm aware of for years, probably since before
> I joined EnterpriseDB. And I still think we're kidding ourselves to
> think that we've got that right when nobody else is doing something
> similar. I don't think the community should reverse that decision to
> benefit EnterpriseDB, or to be compatible with Oracle: I think the
> community should reverse that decision because it's stupid, and the
> precedent of other systems demonstrates that it is possible to do
> better. Oracle's handling of reserved words also seems to be
> considerably less irritating than ours, and I'd propose that we
> improve that in PostgreSQL too, if I knew how to do it.
> Unfortunately, I suspect that requires jettisoning bison and rolling
> our own parser generator, and it's hard to argue that would be a good
> investment of effort for the benefit we'd get.

Also agreed on this, though any serious discussion on this would deserve
its own thread.

Thanks!

Stephen