Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2019 18:43:26 +0100
From: David Fetter <david@fetter.org>
To: Tels <nospam-pg-abuse@bloodgate.com>
Cc: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>,
	Suraj Kharage <suraj.kharage@enterprisedb.com>,
	Rushabh Lathia <rushabh.lathia@gmail.com>,
	David Steele <david@pgmasters.net>,
	Andrew Dunstan <andrew.dunstan@2ndquadrant.com>,
	PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>,
	Jeevan Chalke <jeevan.chalke@enterprisedb.com>,
	vignesh C <vignesh21@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: backup manifests
Message-ID: <20191231174325.GQ32763@fetter.org>
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On Tue, Dec 31, 2019 at 01:30:01PM +0100, Tels wrote:
> Moin,
> 
> sorry for the very late reply. There was a discussion about the specific
> format of the backup manifests, and maybe that was already discussed and I
> just overlooked it:
> 
> 1) Why invent your own format, and not just use a machine-readable format
> that already exists? It doesn't have to be full blown XML, or even JSON,
> something simple as YAML would already be better. That way not everyone has
> to write their own parser. Or maybe it is already YAML and just the
> different keywords where under discussion?

YAML is extremely fragile and error-prone. It's also a superset of
JSON, so I don't understand what you mean by "as simple as."

-1 from me on YAML

That said, I agree that there's no reason to come up with a bespoke
format and parser when JSON is already available in every PostgreSQL
installation.  Imposing a structure atop that includes a version
number, as you suggest, seems pretty straightforward, and should be
done.

Would it make sense to include some kind of capability description in
the format along with the version number?

Best,
David.
-- 
David Fetter <david(at)fetter(dot)org> http://fetter.org/
Phone: +1 415 235 3778

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