Robert Haas wrote:
I agree that ignoring extra columns is a bad idea, but I don't even like the idea of ignoring missing columns. It doesn't seem like a good idea to take a spreadsheet and feed it into COPY without doing any validation anyway, and this is the kind of thing that is trivial to clean up with a thin layer of Perl or your scripting language of choice.
If it's an optional feature then I don't see why there is a problem. What skin is it off anyone else's nose but those whose choose this behaviour?
I am perfectly familiar with Perl and so is the client that requested this feature. They are quite technically savvy. They are using a scripting solution now but they find it cumbersome.
As for general validation, the requestor's application in fact loads the spreadsheet into a temp table of text columns and then subjects it to a large variety of complex business rule checking before adding the data to the main tables. It is a whole lot faster and cleaner to do it that way than before the data is loaded at all. That's why they aren't concerned about missing columns.
cheers andrew -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
