Re: use of OID.Unknown

Dave Cramer wrote:

> 2) We have broken backward compatibility by changing the behaviour of
> setString.

My experience with the driver has been that we don't care much about
backwards compatibility of nonstandard behaviour between major revisions
-- if it's postgresql-specific code, the app can just change as the
driver does.

That's why the protocol changes went into the 8.0 driver, but weren't
backported.. If your app depends on driver-specific behaviour and you
don't want to change it, you can keep using the 7.4.x driver.

> At a minimum I'd propose we bind strings to unknown.

If we do this, what is the path to eventually moving away from unknown?
Using unknown does not feel like the right long-term solution to me .. I
don't want to just dig a deeper hole here.

I also agree with Tom and Kris that it seems too late to do this for the
"8.1" driver. Changing it in a later subrelease is the wrong time to do
it too -- then you'd have 7.4.x with one behaviour, 8.0.x and some 8.1.x
with a different behaviour, and then other 8.1.x with yet another.. urgh.

(I am on leave until February, but will be infrequently checking email)

-O