Re: Rules: A Modest Proposal

sfrost@snowman.net (Stephen Frost) writes:

> * David Fetter (david@fetter.org) wrote:
>> On Sun, Oct 04, 2009 at 04:07:40PM -0400, Robert Haas wrote:
>> > > The radical proposal was the RULE system.  It's been tested now,
>> > > and it's pretty much failed.
>> > 
>> > You still haven't explained what actual benefit we'd get out of
>> > doing this.
>> 
>> Removing land mines is a benefit.
>
> Removing useful functionality without replacing it is definitely worse.

Well, I think we can start here with the premise that there is
disagreement on this...
 Position #1:          Rules are "land mines"; in effect, an "anti-feature."
 Position #2:          Rules represent "useful functionality."

I'd tend more towards #1, myself, and with that as a premise,
replacement isn't, per se, necessary.

The one and only rule I have in the sizable app I'm working on is
there because of the absence of updatable views.

If we could put triggers on views, then I wouldn't need the rule, and
that seems like a reasonable "use case" to have drawn into the modest
proposal...
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