Re: [HACKERS] Something for the TODO list: deprecating abstime and friends

On Wed, Jul 19, 2017 at 1:12 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>> Doesn't this plan amount to breaking pg_upgrade compatibility and
>> hoping that nobody notice?
>
> Well, what we'd need to do is document that the type is only meant to be
> used to store dates within say +/- 30 years from current time.  As long
> as people adhere to that use-case, the proposal would work conveniently
> long into the future ...

Typically, when you try to store an out-of-range value in PostgreSQL,
you get an ERROR, and that's one of the selling points of PostgreSQL.
PostgreSQL users regularly beat up other projects for, say, allowing
0000-00-00 to be considered a valid date, or any similar perceived
laxity in enforcing data consistency.  I don't like the idea that we
can just deviate from that principle whenever adhering to it is too
much work.

> I'd definitely be on board with just dropping the type altogether despite
> Mark's concern.

Then I vote for that option.

-- 
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company