Thread

Re: A proper fix for the conversion-function problem

Tatsuo Ishii <t-ishii@sra.co.jp> — 2005-05-04T00:14:08Z

> I tried disabling public EXECUTE access on the built-in conversion
> functions, as we recommended yesterday, and found that it has one
> small problem: the conversion regression test fails.  The test is
> expecting that unprivileged users can create conversions, but since
> CREATE CONVERSION requires you to have execute permissions on the
> specified function, they can't if we do this.
> 
> This leaves me thinking that the best fix for the back branches
> is the one Andrew@supernews originally suggested: modify the
> signature for conversion functions to use INTERNAL instead of CSTRING.
> I haven't actually experimented with that yet, but will shortly.
> 
> Going forward, though, I really think we need to revisit the API
> for conversion functions.  It seems a bit silly to have the
> infrastructure to let ordinary users create conversions if they
> can't create the functions needed to support them.

Why? Since the functions need to be written in C language, ordinary
users cannot make them anyway. Same thing can be said to CREATE TYPE.
--
Tatsuo Ishii