Re: how to get more detailed error messages?

Tom,

> I have occasionally toyed with the idea of labeling querytree
> elements
> with back-pointers showing the segment of source text that they came
> from, but AFAICT this would impose a nontrivial cost on parsing
> activity
> --- a cost that'd be paid all the time, even on correct queries.  Not
> sure if it'd be a net benefit or not.

I'd suggest it as a compile-time option, if that's feasable.  This is
only a concern, IME, for development machines.  On a production
machine, presumably all of the queries and functions are already
tested.

Thus, if we had the compile-time option of --explicit-query-errors then
it would add this functionality for testers without slowing down
PostgreSQL overall.  Don't know if compile-time options for the parser
are reasonable, though.  Also, I would personally rate this below
several other improvement projects in priority, such as in-database
replication, point-in-time recovery and nested transactions.

-Josh Berkus