Re: Request for comment on setting binary format output per session

On Wed, Oct 4, 2023 at 10:17 AM Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org> wrote:
> I think intuitively, this facility ought to work like client_encoding.

I hadn't really considered client_encoding as a precedent for this
setting. A lot of my discomfort with the proposed mechanism also
applies to client_encoding, namely, suppose you call some function or
procedure or whatever and it changes client_encoding on your behalf
and now your communication with the server is all screwed up. That
seems very unpleasant. Yet it's also existing behavior. I think one
could conclude on these facts either that (a) client_encoding is fine
and the problems with controlling behavior using that kind of
mechanism are mostly theoretical or (b) that we messed up with
client_encoding and shouldn't add any more mistakes of the same ilk or
(c) that we should really be looking at redesigning the way
client_encoding works, too.

--
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com