Re: Big 7.1 open items

> > Yes, I didn't like the environment variable stuff.  In fact, I would
> > like to not mention the symlink location anywhere in the database, so 
> > it can be changed without changing it in the database.
> 
> Well, as y'all have noticed, I think there are strong reasons to use
> environment variables to manage locations, and that symlinks are a
> potential portability and robustness problem.

Sorry, disagree.  Environment variables are a pain to administer, and
quite counter-intuitive.

I also don't see any portability or robustness problems.  Can you be
more specific?

> An additional point which has relevance to this whole discussion:
> 
> In the future we may allow system resource such as tables to carry names
> which use multi-byte encodings. afaik these encodings are not allowed to
> be used for physical file names, and even if they were the utility of
> using standard operating system utilities like ls goes way down.

That is really a different issues of file names.  Multi-byte table names
can be made to hold just the oid.  We have complete control over that
because the file name will be in pg_class.

> istm that from a portability and evolutionary standpoint OID-only file
> names (or at least file names *not* based on relation/class names) is a
> requirement.

Maybe a requirement at some point for some installations, but I hope not
a general requirement.

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