From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
cc: Jelte Fennema-Nio <postgres@jeltef.nl>,
        Jacob Champion <jacob.champion@enterprisedb.com>,
        Dave Cramer <davecramer@gmail.com>,
        PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>,
        Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka@iki.fi>
Subject: Re: Proposal to allow setting cursor options on Portals
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Comments: In-reply-to Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
	message dated "Thu, 08 Jan 2026 14:01:38 -0500"
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Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2026 14:22:50 -0500
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Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> That sounds like the right approach to me. Note that I have also
> previously expressed my disagreement with the idea of bumping the
> protocol version regularly. I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea
> of using protocol extensions for everything, because I really imagined
> that they would be used for larger features that made a cluster of
> related changes rather than solitary changes, and that there wouldn't
> be many of them.

I kind of doubt that there will ever be many of them, but if we start
to feel like there's a lot, we could invent abbreviations: single
feature names that clients can ask for that are defined to represent
a particular set of older features.  But I'd argue that those sets
should be groups of related functions, not "whatever random stuff
exists as of Postgres 27".  I think it'll be highly useful for clients
to declare which features they want, rather than leave people
wondering exactly which features this client intends to support.

			regards, tom lane