Re: Doc patch to note which system catalogs have oids

Karl O. Pinc <kop@meme.com>

From: "Karl O. Pinc" <kop@meme.com>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Date: 2012-09-24T14:38:53Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers

Attachments

On 09/23/2012 10:14:33 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
> "Karl O. Pinc" <kop@meme.com> writes:
> > The attached patch documents the oid column of those
> > system catalogs having an oid.
> 
> I think this is fundamentally wrong, or at least misleading, because
> it
> documents OID as if it were an ordinary column.  Somebody who did
> "select * from pg_class" and didn't see any "oid" in the result would
> think the docs were wrong.

Ok. 

When I went looking at querying the
system catalogs I got confused some time ago because oids were
not listed along with the other columns.  (It didn't help that the
catalog I was looking at had another column of type oid.)

> 
> It's possible that it's worth expending a boilerplate paragraph in
> each
> of those pages to say "this catalog has OIDs" (or that it doesn't).
> But this isn't the way.

How about modifying the ("printed") table layout as attached?
It begins each ("printed") table documenting each catalog with a
"Has OID column" Yes/No.

Also, I note that pg_constraint and pg_collation are not
collated properly in the docs.  (Constraint comes before collation
in the docs, although everything else is sorted by name.)

A second patch (applied on top of the first) fixes this.

Karl <kop@meme.com>
Free Software:  "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
                 -- Robert A. Heinlein