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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References: <202508221535.gixsh3lgyy2z@alvherre.pgsql>
Comments: In-reply-to =?utf-8?Q?=C3=81lvaro?= Herrera <alvherre@kurilemu.de>
	message dated "Fri, 22 Aug 2025 17:35:20 +0200"
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Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2025 11:50:52 -0400
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=?utf-8?Q?=C3=81lvaro?= Herrera <alvherre@kurilemu.de> writes:
> Yeah, AFAIR I wrote it (or at least heavily edited the original to get
> to that), and I was trying to convey exactly those two ideas.  If you
> want to propose improvements, they're very welcome.

Hmmm ... maybe something like

    Mathematically, a "relation" is a set of tuples; this is the sense
    meant in the term "relational database".

    In Postgres, "relation" is commonly used to mean a database object
    that has 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. A relation
    in this sense is a container or descriptor for a set of tuples.

    "Class" is an alternative but archaic term.  The system catalog
    pg_class holds an entry for each Postgres relation.

			regards, tom lane