From: ljb <ljb9832@pobox.com>
To: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Subject: Gripe: bytea_output default => data corruption
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2010 00:37:33 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: <i92v0d$qfe$1@news.hub.org> (raw)
Defaulting bytea output from the backend to use hex mode encoding, which is
incompatible with pre-9.0 interfaces, wasn't a friendly thing to do. The
default should have been escape mode. Or else you needed a big warning in
HISTORY that we must either change bytea_output, or upgrade all clients
before servers. Because using a 9.0 server with a 8.x libpq-based client
results in undetected data corruption when selecting BYTEA objects.
By default, the 9.0 server encodes a bytea using hex mode, but an 8.x
libpq-based client will decode that using escape mode, with no error detected
on either end. For example, start with "A", encode to "\x40" decode to "x40".
There are good reasons to break backward compatibility, like security or
standards compliance, but not performance. Please think twice next time you
consider breaking stuff just because you think the new way should be faster.
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Reply to all the recipients using the --to and --cc options:
reply via email
To: pgsql-docs@postgresql.org
Cc: ljb9832@pobox.com, pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Gripe: bytea_output default => data corruption
In-Reply-To: <i92v0d$qfe$1@news.hub.org>
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
This inbox is served by DDX for PostgreSQL; see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox