Re: How about to have relnamespace and relrole?

Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> writes:
> I have just claimed this as committer in the CF, but on reviewing the 
> emails it looks like there is disagreement about the need for it at all, 
> especially from Tom and Robert.

> I confess I have often wanted regnamespace, particularly, and 
> occasionally regrole, simply as a convenience. But I'm not going to 
> commit it against substantial opposition.

> Do we need a vote?

My concern about it is basically that I don't see where we stop.
The existing regFOO alias types are provided for object classes which
have nontrivial naming conventions (schema qualification, overloaded
argument types, etc), so that you can't just do "select ... from
catalog where objectname = 'blah'".  That doesn't apply to namespaces
or roles.  So I'm afraid that once this precedent is established,
there will be demands for regFOO for every object class we have,
and I don't want that much clutter.

It may be that these two cases are so much more useful than any other
conceivable cases that we can do them and stop, but I don't think that
argument has been made convincingly.
        regards, tom lane