Subject: Re: Alter or rename enum value
To: Gavin Flower <GavinFlower@archidevsys.co.nz>, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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CC: Matthias Kurz <m.kurz@irregular.at>, <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
From: Jim Nasby <Jim.Nasby@BlueTreble.com>
Message-ID: <56F59218.8040103@BlueTreble.com>
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2016 14:31:36 -0500
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On 3/25/16 2:22 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:
>>
>> I've certainly heard people avoiding ENUMs because of their
>> limitations, so it'd be nice if there was a way to lift them.
> Well, I use Enums extensively in Java.
>
> However, I totally avoid using ENUMs in pg, due to their inflexibility!

Possibly related to this, for a long time I've also wanted a way to 
better integrate FKs, probably via some kind of a pseudotype or maybe a 
special operator. The idea being that instead of manually specifying 
joins, you could treat a FK field in a table as a pointer and do things 
like:

CREATE TABLE invoice(customer int NOT NULL REFERENCES(customer));

SELECT invoice.*, customer->first_name, customer->last_name, ...
   FROM invoice;

If we had that capability, there would be less need for ENUMs.
-- 
Jim Nasby, Data Architect, Blue Treble Consulting, Austin TX
Experts in Analytics, Data Architecture and PostgreSQL
Data in Trouble? Get it in Treble! http://BlueTreble.com


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