Re: [HACKERS] Data type removal

Bruce Momjian:
> Aren't there enough serious issues on the TODO list for people?  These
> are actual complaints/bugs or requests from users, not pie-in-the-sky
> wouldn't-it-be-nice-if-we-had ideas.
>
> I had a private e-mail conversation with someone, and they mentioned
> that we seem to be mired in micro-optimizations, that really are not
> going to do us any significant good.  I see his point.

Please feel free to quote me if I am the "someone" (I suspect I was).

> Another thing.  It is the type extensibility that makes us more complex,
> not the types themselves.

It is also the type extensibility that makes us more valuable. There are
lots of "plain old SQL" systems out there. There are very few extendable
systems.

Perhaps we might want to start encourageing people to use the
extensibility and write a few useful application modules. I know of a
few that have been pretty sucessful in the commercial world:

 - Html generation from inside the database. Store your pages in the db
   with embedded <SQL ... /SQL> tags to dynamically generate web content
   based on queries.

 - Integrated full text search engines. Store documents and be able to
   query " select abstract from papers
           where contains(fulltext, 'database', 'transaction', 'recovery')".

And so on.

-dg

David Gould            dg@illustra.com           510.628.3783 or 510.305.9468
Informix Software  (No, really)         300 Lakeside Drive  Oakland, CA 94612
 - Linux. Not because it is free. Because it is better.