Feedback-ID: ie3de48e3:Fastmail
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2025 18:23:46 +0200
From: =?utf-8?Q?=C3=81lvaro?= Herrera <alvherre@kurilemu.de>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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
Message-ID: <202508281623.awysrsga4r34@alvherre.pgsql>
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On 2025-Aug-22, Tom Lane wrote:

> 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.

Thanks, pushed like that.  I changed "a database object" to "an SQL
object", because that's a term we have a definition for.

(I also wrote "PostgreSQL" where you had "Postgres".  I think it might
be okay now to change the product name in various places here, but it
seems better to do it consistently across the whole page.)

-- 
Álvaro Herrera        Breisgau, Deutschland  —  https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/
"¿Qué importan los años?  Lo que realmente importa es comprobar que
a fin de cuentas la mejor edad de la vida es estar vivo"  (Mafalda)