Horton

Re: [PATCH] Add CANONICAL option to xmlserialize

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

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From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Jim Jones <jim.jones@uni-muenster.de>
Cc: Pavel Stehule <pavel.stehule@gmail.com>, Chapman Flack <chap@anastigmatix.net>, vignesh C <vignesh21@gmail.com>, Thomas Munro <thomas.munro@gmail.com>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>, Vik Fearing <vik@postgresfriends.org>
Date: 2024-09-10T17:43:36Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers 
Jim Jones <jim.jones@uni-muenster.de> writes:
> This patch introduces the CANONICAL option to xmlserialize, which
> serializes xml documents in their canonical form - as described in
> the W3C Canonical XML Version 1.1 specification. This option can
> be used with the additional parameter WITH [NO] COMMENTS to keep
> or remove xml comments from the canonical xml output.

While I don't object to providing this functionality in some form,
I think that doing it with this specific syntax is a seriously
bad idea.  I think there's significant risk that at some point
the SQL committee will either standardize this syntax with a
somewhat different meaning or standardize some other syntax for
the same functionality.

How about instead introducing a plain function along the lines of
"xml_canonicalize(xml, bool keep_comments) returns text" ?  The SQL
committee will certainly never do that, but we won't regret having
created a plain function whenever they get around to doing something
in the same space.

			regards, tom lane