From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: =?utf-8?Q?=C3=81lvaro?= Herrera <alvherre@kurilemu.de>
cc: Kirill Reshke <reshkekirill@gmail.com>,
        jian he <jian.universality@gmail.com>,
        PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: misleading error message in ProcessUtilitySlow T_CreateStatsStmt
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Comments: In-reply-to =?utf-8?Q?=C3=81lvaro?= Herrera <alvherre@kurilemu.de>
	message dated "Fri, 22 Aug 2025 11:46:45 +0200"
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Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2025 10:37:24 -0400
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=?utf-8?Q?=C3=81lvaro?= Herrera <alvherre@kurilemu.de> writes:
> I'm not sure.  See the definition of relation in the glossary:
> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/18/glossary.html#GLOSSARY-RELATION

>   The generic term for all objects in a database that have a name and a
>   list of attributes defined in a specific order. Tables, sequences,
>   views, foreign tables, materialized views, composite types, and
>   indexes are all relations.

>   More generically, a relation is a set of tuples; for example, the
>   result of a query is also a relation.

>   In PostgreSQL, Class is an archaic synonym for relation.

> (I wonder why this says "generically" rather than "generally".  Is that
> word choice a mistake?)  Maybe in the "For example" clause we can also
> mention table functions.

Yeah, I think s/generically/generally/ would be an improvement.

I'm not certain, but I think that our use of "relation" to mean
"an object with a pg_class entry" is a Postgres-ism.  I do know
that the meaning of "a set of tuples" is widely used, as that's
where the term "relational database" comes from.  Maybe whoever
wrote this was trying to get at that point?  But this text is
hardly clear about that.

			regards, tom lane