Re: code cleanup of timestamp code

On Tue, 2008-02-26 at 00:22 -0800, Warren Turkal wrote:
> As a result, I have a few questions about the timestamp code. In what
> instances is the floating point timestamp recommended?

One circumstance is when there isn't a native int64 type available. The
floating point datetime code is the traditional implementation -- until
recently the integer datetime code was less tested and more buggy,
although I don't think that is still the case. For 8.4 I'm planning to
submit a patch to make integer datetimes the default, per earlier
discussion.

> Is the backend smart enough to not load and use a database with
> timestamp fields created with the representation not compiled into the
> compiler?

Postgres will refuse to start if the compiled-in datetime representation
doesn't match the datetime representation used by the specified data
directory.

> And finally, would this work be welcome in PostgreSQL?

Yes, sounds like a useful improvement to me. There are quite a few
cleanups and refactorings that could be done to the datetime code.

-Neil