Re: [HACKERS] Documentation/help for materialized and recursive views
On 6/28/13 2:27 PM, David Fetter wrote: You can run \! man from within psql, And if you're on Windows, you're Sadly Out of Luck with that. Is there an equivalent we could #ifdef in for that platform? If you are using psql on Windows extensively, you probably have one of mingw, cygwin, or pgadmin handy, all of which can get you to the documentation. I don't think it's worth devising a mechanism for those not covered by this. -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
Re: [HACKERS] Documentation/help for materialized and recursive views
On Mon, Jul 01, 2013 at 10:05:24AM -0400, Peter Eisentraut wrote: On 6/28/13 2:27 PM, David Fetter wrote: You can run \! man from within psql, And if you're on Windows, you're Sadly Out of Luck with that. Is there an equivalent we could #ifdef in for that platform? If you are using psql on Windows extensively, you probably have one of mingw, cygwin, or pgadmin handy, all of which can get you to the documentation. I don't think it's worth devising a mechanism for those not covered by this. With deepest respect, failing to provide documentation to users on our widest-deployed platform seems pretty hostile to me. There was an earlier suggestion that we provide URLs, which seems like a decent way forward as those environments so locked down as to disallow outbound HTTP are pretty rare, and non-networked computers are even more rare. Cheers, David. -- David Fetter da...@fetter.org http://fetter.org/ Phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666 Yahoo!: dfetter Skype: davidfetter XMPP: david.fet...@gmail.com iCal: webcal://www.tripit.com/feed/ical/people/david74/tripit.ics Remember to vote! Consider donating to Postgres: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
Re: [HACKERS] Documentation/help for materialized and recursive views
On 7/1/13 10:20 AM, David Fetter wrote: On Mon, Jul 01, 2013 at 10:05:24AM -0400, Peter Eisentraut wrote: On 6/28/13 2:27 PM, David Fetter wrote: You can run \! man from within psql, And if you're on Windows, you're Sadly Out of Luck with that. Is there an equivalent we could #ifdef in for that platform? If you are using psql on Windows extensively, you probably have one of mingw, cygwin, or pgadmin handy, all of which can get you to the documentation. I don't think it's worth devising a mechanism for those not covered by this. With deepest respect, failing to provide documentation to users on our widest-deployed platform seems pretty hostile to me. As I argue above, I don't think this is the widest-deployed platform. The actual platform in use is either mingw, which has man, or click-and-drool, which has pgadmin, both of which provide the documentation. There was an earlier suggestion that we provide URLs, which seems like a decent way forward as those environments so locked down as to disallow outbound HTTP are pretty rare, and non-networked computers are even more rare. Does clicking on links in cmd.exe do anything useful? -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
Re: [HACKERS] Documentation/help for materialized and recursive views
On Mon, Jul 01, 2013 at 10:52:55AM -0400, Peter Eisentraut wrote: On 7/1/13 10:20 AM, David Fetter wrote: On Mon, Jul 01, 2013 at 10:05:24AM -0400, Peter Eisentraut wrote: On 6/28/13 2:27 PM, David Fetter wrote: You can run \! man from within psql, And if you're on Windows, you're Sadly Out of Luck with that. Is there an equivalent we could #ifdef in for that platform? If you are using psql on Windows extensively, you probably have one of mingw, cygwin, or pgadmin handy, all of which can get you to the documentation. I don't think it's worth devising a mechanism for those not covered by this. With deepest respect, failing to provide documentation to users on our widest-deployed platform seems pretty hostile to me. As I argue above, I don't think this is the widest-deployed platform. The actual platform in use is either mingw, which has man, or click-and-drool, which has pgadmin, both of which provide the documentation. I'm not going to get into a big definitional wrangle here. Has available (as in you could install software if you wanted to) is a pretty long distance from actually handy, which URLs are a bit closer to. There was an earlier suggestion that we provide URLs, which seems like a decent way forward as those environments so locked down as to disallow outbound HTTP are pretty rare, and non-networked computers are even more rare. Does clicking on links in cmd.exe do anything useful? Apparently start URL works for some large class of URLs. More details here: http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/open-files-urls.html Cheers, David. -- David Fetter da...@fetter.org http://fetter.org/ Phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666 Yahoo!: dfetter Skype: davidfetter XMPP: david.fet...@gmail.com iCal: webcal://www.tripit.com/feed/ical/people/david74/tripit.ics Remember to vote! Consider donating to Postgres: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
Re: [HACKERS] Documentation/help for materialized and recursive views
On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 10:20 AM, David Fetter da...@fetter.org wrote: With deepest respect, failing to provide documentation to users on our widest-deployed platform seems pretty hostile to me. Yes, that would be pretty hostile. However, we don't do anything that remotely resembles that statement, nor has anyone proposed any such thing. Personally, I think this whole thread is much ado about nothing. Magnus is basically arguing that people might expect that CREATE VIEW ought to tell you about CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW also, but I don't find that argument to have a whole lot of merit. Views and materialized views are pretty different things; it is a bit like asking why Googling for dog does not give you information on hot dogs. The output of psql's \h command is intended to be a succinct synopsis summarizing the salient syntax (try saying that five times fast), not a comprehensive reference. If you want the latter, read the fine manual. I admit that this particular case is slightly more prone to confusion than some, but I'm just not that exercised about it. Every bit of detail we add to the \h output is better for the people who otherwise would have been unhappy, but it's worse for all the people who did need it because it's more to read through. Regardless of whether you agree with or disagree with the above statement, building a high-quality documentation reader into psql so that users who are running Windows but not mingw, cygwin, or pgAdmin can access the documentation more easily doesn't seem like the correct solution to this problem. I don't really object if somebody wants to do it (although someone else may object) but it's certainly taking the long way around as far as this particular confusion is concerned. -- 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
Re: [HACKERS] Documentation/help for materialized and recursive views
On 07/01/2013 03:26 PM, Robert Haas wrote: Regardless of whether you agree with or disagree with the above statement, building a high-quality documentation reader into psql so that users who are running Windows but not mingw, cygwin, or pgAdmin can access the documentation more easily doesn't seem like the correct solution to this problem. I don't really object if somebody wants to do it (although someone else may object) but it's certainly taking the long way around as far as this particular confusion is concerned. FWIW, in my reasonably substantial experience, virtually every user on Windows uses pgadmin3. Use of psql is fairly rare. 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
Re: [HACKERS] Documentation/help for materialized and recursive views
On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 9:26 PM, Robert Haas robertmh...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 10:20 AM, David Fetter da...@fetter.org wrote: With deepest respect, failing to provide documentation to users on our widest-deployed platform seems pretty hostile to me. Yes, that would be pretty hostile. However, we don't do anything that remotely resembles that statement, nor has anyone proposed any such thing. Personally, I think this whole thread is much ado about nothing. Magnus is basically arguing that people might expect that CREATE VIEW ought to tell you about CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW also, but I don't find that argument to have a whole lot of merit. Views and materialized views are pretty different things; it is a bit like How different are they really? Yes, they are very different from an implementation standpoint, from an enduser perspective they really are not. If they were, they'd probably be called something else.. asking why Googling for dog does not give you information on hot dogs. The output of psql's \h command is intended to be a succinct I'd personally say it's more like googling for dog gives me hits specifically around dog breeding and not just dogs themselves. synopsis summarizing the salient syntax (try saying that five times fast), not a comprehensive reference. If you want the latter, read the fine manual. I admit that this particular case is slightly more prone to confusion than some, but I'm just not that exercised about it. Every bit of detail we add to the \h output is better for the people who otherwise would have been unhappy, but it's worse for all the people who did need it because it's more to read through. True. Regardless of whether you agree with or disagree with the above statement, building a high-quality documentation reader into psql so that users who are running Windows but not mingw, cygwin, or pgAdmin can access the documentation more easily doesn't seem like the correct solution to this problem. I don't really object if somebody wants to do it (although someone else may object) but it's certainly taking the long way around as far as this particular confusion is concerned. I still think a better option to that would be to get psql to provide a link to the full documentation there. pgAdmin could also do that, but doesn't - it gets you a link to the main documentation, but not a context sensitive one IIRC. -- Magnus Hagander Me: http://www.hagander.net/ Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/ -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
Re: [HACKERS] Documentation/help for materialized and recursive views
On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 3:57 PM, Magnus Hagander mag...@hagander.net wrote: How different are they really? Yes, they are very different from an implementation standpoint, from an enduser perspective they really are not. If they were, they'd probably be called something else. They're different because they consume storage, require effort to update, and aren't always up-to-date. Those things are all quite user-visible. I still think a better option to that would be to get psql to provide a link to the full documentation there. It seems like clutter to me, but I'll defer to whatever the consensus is. -- 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
Re: [HACKERS] Documentation/help for materialized and recursive views
On 07/01/2013 07:20 AM, David Fetter wrote: On Mon, Jul 01, 2013 at 10:05:24AM -0400, Peter Eisentraut wrote: On 6/28/13 2:27 PM, David Fetter wrote: You can run \! man from within psql, And if you're on Windows, you're Sadly Out of Luck with that. Is there an equivalent we could #ifdef in for that platform? If you are using psql on Windows extensively, you probably have one of mingw, cygwin, or pgadmin handy, all of which can get you to the documentation. I don't think it's worth devising a mechanism for those not covered by this. With deepest respect, failing to provide documentation to users on our widest-deployed platform seems pretty hostile to me. There was an earlier suggestion that we provide URLs, which seems like a decent way forward as those environments so locked down as to disallow outbound HTTP are pretty rare, and non-networked computers are even more rare. Although I agree with the sentiment the idea that postgres more widely deployed on windows than other platforms is rather laughable. The only metrics we have are downloads which doesn't count cause linux ships with postgres with a simple yum or apt-get. Whatever solution we decide, we should not push this responsibility off on pgadmin as pgadmin is not part of PostgreSQL but a third party tool. The standard postgresql client is psql (for good or bad) and we should support psql fully on all platforms. Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake -- Command Prompt, Inc. - http://www.commandprompt.com/ 509-416-6579 PostgreSQL Support, Training, Professional Services and Development High Availability, Oracle Conversion, Postgres-XC, @cmdpromptinc For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart. - W.B. Yeats -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
Re: [HACKERS] Documentation/help for materialized and recursive views
Robert Haas escribió: On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 3:57 PM, Magnus Hagander mag...@hagander.net wrote: I still think a better option to that would be to get psql to provide a link to the full documentation there. It seems like clutter to me, but I'll defer to whatever the consensus is. I second the idea of having psql's \h provide a link to the command's specific reference page. -- Álvaro Herrerahttp://www.2ndQuadrant.com/ PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training Services -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
Re: [HACKERS] Documentation/help for materialized and recursive views
On Fri, Jun 28, 2013 at 5:54 AM, Kevin Grittner kgri...@ymail.com wrote: Robert Haas robertmh...@gmail.com wrote: Magnus Hagander mag...@hagander.net wrote: 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? IMHO, it's better to keep them separate; they are very different beasts. +1 Although I wonder whether we shouldn't cross-link those pages They are already crosslinked under see also. But that doesn't really help the guy doing \h CREATE VIEW in psql, which was the case where it was brought to my attention. -- Magnus Hagander Me: http://www.hagander.net/ Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/ -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
Re: [HACKERS] Documentation/help for materialized and recursive views
Magnus Hagander escribió: They are already crosslinked under see also. But that doesn't really help the guy doing \h CREATE VIEW in psql, which was the case where it was brought to my attention. Maybe \h should somehow display the see also section? -- Álvaro Herrerahttp://www.2ndQuadrant.com/ PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training Services -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
Re: [HACKERS] Documentation/help for materialized and recursive views
On Fri, Jun 28, 2013 at 4:49 PM, Alvaro Herrera alvhe...@2ndquadrant.com wrote: Magnus Hagander escribió: They are already crosslinked under see also. But that doesn't really help the guy doing \h CREATE VIEW in psql, which was the case where it was brought to my attention. Maybe \h should somehow display the see also section? I've been toying with the idea getting \h to show an actual http:// link to the reference page on the website, since most terminals lets you deal with URLs easily lately. I haven't actually looked into how feasible that would be though, but it would be interesting to check out. (With a toggle to turn it on/off of course) -- Magnus Hagander Me: http://www.hagander.net/ Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/ -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
Re: [HACKERS] Documentation/help for materialized and recursive views
On 6/28/13 10:49 AM, Alvaro Herrera wrote: Magnus Hagander escribió: They are already crosslinked under see also. But that doesn't really help the guy doing \h CREATE VIEW in psql, which was the case where it was brought to my attention. Maybe \h should somehow display the see also section? You can run \! man from within psql, which should give you everything you need. It's admittedly a bit obscure, but it's there. Maybe it ought to be added to the initial help output. -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
Re: [HACKERS] Documentation/help for materialized and recursive views
Peter Eisentraut escribió: On 6/28/13 10:49 AM, Alvaro Herrera wrote: Magnus Hagander escribió: They are already crosslinked under see also. But that doesn't really help the guy doing \h CREATE VIEW in psql, which was the case where it was brought to my attention. Maybe \h should somehow display the see also section? You can run \! man from within psql, which should give you everything you need. It's admittedly a bit obscure, but it's there. Maybe it ought to be added to the initial help output. That's a neat trick, but obviously it won't work in Windows. Maybe we ought to have \man .. -- Álvaro Herrerahttp://www.2ndQuadrant.com/ PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training Services -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
Re: [HACKERS] Documentation/help for materialized and recursive views
On Fri, Jun 28, 2013 at 01:34:17PM -0400, Peter Eisentraut wrote: On 6/28/13 10:49 AM, Alvaro Herrera wrote: Magnus Hagander escribió: They are already crosslinked under see also. But that doesn't really help the guy doing \h CREATE VIEW in psql, which was the case where it was brought to my attention. Maybe \h should somehow display the see also section? You can run \! man from within psql, And if you're on Windows, you're Sadly Out of Luck with that. Is there an equivalent we could #ifdef in for that platform? Cheers, David. -- David Fetter da...@fetter.org http://fetter.org/ Phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666 Yahoo!: dfetter Skype: davidfetter XMPP: david.fet...@gmail.com iCal: webcal://www.tripit.com/feed/ical/people/david74/tripit.ics Remember to vote! Consider donating to Postgres: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
[HACKERS] Documentation/help for materialized and recursive views
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? -- Magnus Hagander Me: http://www.hagander.net/ Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/ -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
Re: [HACKERS] Documentation/help for materialized and recursive views
2013/6/27 Magnus Hagander mag...@hagander.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). 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. Nicolas -- A. Because it breaks the logical sequence of discussion. Q. Why is top posting bad? -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
Re: [HACKERS] Documentation/help for materialized and recursive views
On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 10:56 AM, Nicolas Barbier nicolas.barb...@gmail.com wrote: 2013/6/27 Magnus Hagander mag...@hagander.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/ -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
Re: [HACKERS] Documentation/help for materialized and recursive views
On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 5:29 AM, Magnus Hagander mag...@hagander.net wrote: 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? IMHO, it's better to keep them separate; they are very different beasts. -- 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
Re: [HACKERS] Documentation/help for materialized and recursive views
Robert Haas robertmh...@gmail.com wrote: Magnus Hagander mag...@hagander.net wrote: 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? IMHO, it's better to keep them separate; they are very different beasts. +1 Although I wonder whether we shouldn't cross-link those pages -- Kevin Grittner 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
