Re: Documentation/help for materialized and recursive views

On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 10:56 AM, Nicolas Barbier
<nicolas(dot)barbier(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> 2013/6/27 Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net>:
>
>> Is there a particular reason why CREATE RECURSIVE VIEW is part of the
>> help for CREATE VIEW, but CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW doesn't show up
>> there?
>>
>> I realize the technical reason (they're different man pages, and that
>> also controls what's in \h in psql which is where I ran into it), but
>> was there any particular reason to split those up in the first place?
>
> Normal views are an abstraction layer, while materialized views
> (despite containing the word “view”) are mainly a performance tool (in
> a way similar to indexes).

Oh yes, I'm well aware of this of course.

> The functionality of materialized views will (over time) totally swamp
> that of normal views, so mixing all the corresponding documentation
> with the documentation for normal views probably doesn’t make things
> easier for people that are only interested in normal views.

That's a better point I think. That said, it would be very useful if
it actually showed up in "\h CREATE VIEW" in psql - I wonder if we
should just add the syntax to that page, and then link said future
information on a separate page somehow?

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: http://www.hagander.net/
Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/