Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2024 18:37:47 -0500
From: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: Thomas Munro <thomas.munro@gmail.com>,
	Bertrand Drouvot <bertranddrouvot.pg@gmail.com>,
	Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>, adam@labkey.com,
	pgsql-bugs@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: BUG #18711: Attempting a connection with a database name longer
 than 63 characters now fails
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On Mon, Dec  2, 2024 at 06:16:19PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
> > I am concerned we are going to get a lot of complaints about this
> > restricted change because most people are happily using whatever
> > encoding they want, and as long as they don't hit the 64-byte limit,
> > they are fine.  Are people going to be happy with this restriction just
> > to keep 64+-byte identifiers safe?
> 
> That's a remarkably rose-tinted view of the current state of affairs.
> Reality is that using multiple encodings in shared catalogs just plain
> doesn't work very well.  Even something as simple as "select datname
> from pg_database" is likely to give garbage if there are entries in
> encodings that don't match your current database's encoding.  What
> Thomas is proposing is to formalize and then enforce the two usage
> patterns that we know work okay.
> 
> Moreover, the proposal also includes a third backwards-compatibility
> mode that will let anyone who does like the current approach to keep
> using it.  So I'm unclear on why you think there's a big downside.

I have not heard of anyone complaining about the problem of viewing the
shared catalog  columns so I didn't consider that benefit.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        https://momjian.us
  EDB                                      https://enterprisedb.com

  When a patient asks the doctor, "Am I going to die?", he means 
  "Am I going to die soon?"