Re: uncataloged tables are a vestigial husk

Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
Cc: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Date: 2012-06-13T17:13:43Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> While working on some code today, I noticed that RELKIND_UNCATALOGED
> appears to serve no useful purpose.  In the few places where we check
> for it at all, we treat it in exactly the same way as
> RELKIND_RELATION.  It seems that it's only purpose is to serve as a
> placeholder inside each newly-created relcache entry until the real
> relkind is filled in.

I suspect that it had some actual usefulness back in Berkeley days.
But now that catalogs are created with the correct relkind to start
with during initdb, I agree it's probably just inertia keeping that
around.

> The attached patch cleans it up by removing RELKIND_UNCATALOGED and
> teaching RelationBuildLocalRelation() to set the relkind itself.

I think there are probably some places to fix in the docs too.

			regards, tom lane