On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 10:45 AM, Tom Lane <t...@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote: > Robert Haas <robertmh...@gmail.com> writes: >> On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 9:52 AM, Tom Lane <t...@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote: >>> Actually, what occurs to me to wonder is whether the facility has to be >>> guaranteed unique at all. If for instance you have a group of overloaded >>> functions, is there really a big use-case for dumping just one and not >>> the whole group? Even if you think there's some use for it, is it big >>> enough to justify a quantum jump in the complexity of the feature? > >> Well, I think that being able to dump one specific function is a >> pretty important use case. But I don't see why that's necessarily >> irreconcilable with your suggested syntax of --function=pattern, if we >> assume that the pattern is being matched against >> pg_proc.oid::regprocedure and define the matching rules such that >> foo(text) will not match sfoo(text). Nothing anyone has proposed >> sounds like a quantum jump in complexity over your proposal. > > It *will* be manifestly harder to use if users have to spell the > argument types just so. Consider int4 versus integer, varchar versus > character varying (and not character varying(N)), etc etc. I think > that leaving out the argument types is something we should very strongly > consider here.
I don't see why this is an either/or question. Can't we make them optional? >>> BTW, what about dependencies? One of the main complaints we've heard >>> about pg_restore's filtering features is that they are not smart about >>> including things like the indexes of a selected table, or the objects it >>> depends on (eg, functions referred to in CHECK constraints). I'm not >>> sure that a pure name-based filter will be any more usable than >>> pg_restore's filter, if there is no accounting for dependencies. > >> I am 100% positive that it will be a big step forward. > > Apparently you haven't been reading pgsql-bugs and pgsql-novice for the > last five or ten years. These are large problems in practice. That seems like a cheap shot, since you already know that I haven't been reading any of the mailing lists for that long. I have, however, been using PostgreSQL for that long, and I've hit this problem myself. I don't say that being able to dump an exact object and nothing more will solve every use case, but I do say it's useful, at least to me. I've wanted it many times. -- Robert Haas EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers