Re: JSON for PG 9.2

On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 12:25 AM, Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> wrote:
> On mån, 2011-12-12 at 16:51 -0800, Peter van Hardenberg wrote:
>> Because we haven't heard from him in a while we've been using PL/V8 to
>> validate a JSON datatype simulated by a DOMAIN with a simple
>> acceptance function. (See below.) This is not ideally performant but
>> thanks to V8's JIT the JSON parser is actually reasonably good.
>>
>> I think releasing something simple and non-performant with reasonable
>> semantics would be the best next step. If it were up to me, I'd
>> probably even try to just land PL/V8 as PL/JavaScript for 9.2 if the
>> crash bugs and deal breakers can be sifted out.
>
> You don't need a new PL to do that.  The existing PLs can also parse
> JSON.  So that's not nearly enough of a reason to consider adding this
> new PL.

Just because all our languages are Turing-complete doesn't mean they
are all equally well-suited to every task.  Of course, that doesn't
mean we'd add a whole new language just to get a JSON parser, but I
don't think that's really what Peter was saying.  Rather, I think the
point is that embedded Javascript is *extremely* popular, lots and
lots of people are supporting it, and we ought to seriously consider
doing the same.  It's hard to think of another PL that we could add
that would give us anywhere near the bang for the buck that Javascript
would.

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