On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 5:34 PM, Russell Wallace <russell.wall...@gmail.com> wrote: > > The following bug has been logged online: > > Bug reference: 5218 > Logged by: Russell Wallace > Email address: russell.wall...@gmail.com > PostgreSQL version: 8.4.1 > Operating system: Windows > Description: Easy strategic feature requests > Details: > > (There wasn't a separate form for feature requests, so I'm assuming that > like most projects, this one files them together with bugs, please let me > know if that is not the case.) > > Can you make Show Databases, Show Tables and Describe (table) work the way > they do in MySQL? This would make things easier for newbies and would also > make it easier to port code from MySQL; they would only need to be syntax > sugar for the corresponding information schema queries, so it would probably > only take a few lines of code, and would improve PostgreSQL's competitive > position versus MySQL out of all proportion to the apparent significance of > these features. > > It would be nice if Use (database) could also be made to work, but I'm > guessing this would not be just a few lines of code. What would be easy and > still useful, however, would be if it could return a specific error message: > "you can't do this in Postgres, you always need to supply a database name on > connection"; again that would make life easier for newbies, and that matters > a lot for competitive advantage.
Features requests are usually discussed on pgsql-hackers. I'm not sure there will be much support for this proposal, although I it did take me a while to figure out the PostgreSQL equivalents of those commands when I made the switch. For interactive use, the psql backslash-commands are fine, but for scripted access to the schema, the MySQL way is definitely easier. One of the problems is that "show" is already a PostgreSQL verb with an incompatible meaning. Rather than trying to be compatible with MySQL directly, I think we might be better off adding a chapter to our documentation explaining to ex-MySQL users how to accomplish the same things in PostgreSQL. We might even think about adding a contrib module with user-defined functions like show_databases(), show_tables(), describe(text), so that someone could do SELECT describe('foo'); and get a familiar sort of output. ...Robert -- Sent via pgsql-bugs mailing list (pgsql-bugs@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-bugs