Subject: Inheritance mention

From: Bruce Momjian <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:22:15 -0400 (EDT)

Do people feel we should continue documenting that Postgres pre-7.1
didn't reference child tables by default?

	(In releases before 7.1, <literal>ONLY</> was the default
	behavior.)  The default behavior can be modified by changing
	the <xref linkend="guc-sql-inheritance"> configuration option.

I see this mentioned four places in the documentation.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <[email-masked]>        http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                             http://enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

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From: Euler Taveira de Oliveira <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 02:14:53 -0300

> didn't reference child tables by default?
No. IMHO we should remove references to unsupported releases from documentation.

-- 
   Euler Taveira de Oliveira
   http://www.timbira.com/

---

From: Tom Lane <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 02:04:18 -0400

> No. IMHO we should remove references to unsupported releases from documentation.

"Unsupported releases" is far too strict a criterion for this.  For
example, there are demonstrably still people using 7.2 (we had a
question about it just last week).  They will still appreciate these
notes when they get around to updating.

Pre-7.1 might indeed be old enough to cut, but how much are we really
saving?  Four sentences out of our current docs doesn't excite me ...

			regards, tom lane

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From: Scott Marlowe <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 10:47:32 -0600

> saving?  Four sentences out of our current docs doesn't excite me ...

But since there's a doc set per version, it would make sense to stop
mentioning unsupported versions in the docs for supported versions,
no?  Or is this a FAQ thing we're talking about?

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From: Tom Lane <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:21:46 -0400

> no?  Or is this a FAQ thing we're talking about?

The problem is what to tell people to read if they want to transition
from an unsupported version to a supported version.

If we really wanted to save some space, we could cut all the release
notes for pre-7.4 (soon pre-8.0) releases.  But somehow that doesn't
seem like a good idea.  What it would mainly accomplish is to make it
hard to find the old information when you wanted it.

			regards, tom lane

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From: Bruce Momjian <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:42:54 -0400 (EDT)

> hard to find the old information when you wanted it.

It is not a question of documention bulk but the burden of having users
wade through a paragraph that is much more complex because of the 7.1
mention. 

I have applied the attached patch to remove mention of the 7.1 behavior
in alter_table and select;  I have kept the main documentation mentions
unchanged.  I also still reference the sql_inheritance GUC variable,
where there are more details.

Maybe I wasn't clear in my original posting;   I never wanted to remove
all mentions, but rather retain mentions in logical locations.

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +
Index: doc/src/sgml/ref/alter_table.sgml
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/pgsql/doc/src/sgml/ref/alter_table.sgml,v
retrieving revision 1.104
diff -c -c -r1.104 alter_table.sgml
*** doc/src/sgml/ref/alter_table.sgml	11 Feb 2009 21:11:15 -0000	1.104
--- doc/src/sgml/ref/alter_table.sgml	15 Apr 2009 22:35:28 -0000
***************
*** 450,462 ****
         <para>
          The name (possibly schema-qualified) of an existing table to
          alter. If <literal>ONLY</> is specified, only that table is
!         altered. If <literal>ONLY</> is not specified, the table and all
!         its descendant tables (if any) are updated. <literal>*</> can be
!         appended to the table name to indicate that descendant tables are
!         to be altered, but in the current version, this is the default
!         behavior.  (In releases before 7.1, <literal>ONLY</> was the
!         default behavior.  The default can be altered by changing the
!         configuration parameter <xref linkend="guc-sql-inheritance">.)
         </para>
        </listitem>
       </varlistentry>
--- 450,459 ----
         <para>
          The name (possibly schema-qualified) of an existing table to
          alter. If <literal>ONLY</> is specified, only that table is
!         altered. If <literal>ONLY</> is not specified, the table and any
!         descendant tables are altered. The default can be changed
!         using the configuration parameter <xref
!         linkend="guc-sql-inheritance">.
         </para>
        </listitem>
       </varlistentry>
Index: doc/src/sgml/ref/select.sgml
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/pgsql/doc/src/sgml/ref/select.sgml,v
retrieving revision 1.120
diff -c -c -r1.120 select.sgml
*** doc/src/sgml/ref/select.sgml	2 Feb 2009 20:42:57 -0000	1.120
--- doc/src/sgml/ref/select.sgml	15 Apr 2009 22:35:32 -0000
***************
*** 271,282 ****
          The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing table or
          view.  If <literal>ONLY</> is specified, only that table is
          scanned.  If <literal>ONLY</> is not specified, the table and
!         all its descendant tables (if any) are scanned.  <literal>*</>
!         can be appended to the table name to indicate that descendant
!         tables are to be scanned, but in the current version, this is
!         the default behavior.  (In releases before 7.1,
!         <literal>ONLY</> was the default behavior.)  The default
!         behavior can be modified by changing the <xref
          linkend="guc-sql-inheritance"> configuration option.
         </para>
        </listitem>
--- 271,278 ----
          The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing table or
          view.  If <literal>ONLY</> is specified, only that table is
          scanned.  If <literal>ONLY</> is not specified, the table and
!         any descendant tables are scanned.  The default
!         behavior can be changed using the <xref
          linkend="guc-sql-inheritance"> configuration option.
         </para>
        </listitem>