Re: dblink_ora - a first shot on Oracle ...

Tom Lane wrote:
> I tend to agree with Peter: if dblink is going to start depending on
> stuff outside Postgres, it ought to be become a separate project,
> if only to simplify distribution and configuration issues.
>
> Perhaps it could be split into two parts, a PG-specific part and
> a cross-DBMS part?
>
> regards, tom lane
>
> PS: Has anyone looked any further at the SQL-MED standard? ISTM that's
> where we ought to head in the long run.

I think for that very reason (SQL-MED) we need to come to terms with
this issue. If/when connections to external data sources is in the
backend, you'll have those exact same dependencies. And in fact, we do
today: consider '--with-openssl' or '--with-tcl'.

I had always assumed we would need '--with-oracle', '--with-jdbc', etc
(or whatever you want to call them) to support backend connections to
external sources. And this discussion is the very reason I was hesitant
to pursue dblink_ora or jdbclink now, because I didn't think people
would be comfortable with configure options to support a contrib library.

Joe