To: "Dave Page" <dpage@vale-housing.co.uk>
Cc: pgman@candle.pha.pa.us, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org,
	pgsql-interfaces@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Roadmap for FE/BE protocol redesign 
In-reply-to: <50149.80.177.99.193.1047375273.squirrel@ssl.vale-housing.co.uk> 
References: <1942.1047350265@sss.pgh.pa.us>
	<200303110244.h2B2i1j15763@candle.pha.pa.us>
	<50149.80.177.99.193.1047375273.squirrel@ssl.vale-housing.co.uk>
Comments: In-reply-to "Dave Page" <dpage@vale-housing.co.uk>
	message dated "Tue, 11 Mar 2003 09:34:33 +0000"
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 10:06:07 -0500
Message-ID: <4977.1047395167@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

"Dave Page" <dpage@vale-housing.co.uk> writes:
> Well, what would constitute a complete spec? I think I've told the group
> what I would like to be able to do, what unanswered questions can I
> (hopefully :-) ) answer?

I'm still unclear on exactly what your needs are.  In the first place,
are you expecting to obtain data from arbitrary SELECT statements, or
only from statements of the form "SELECT * FROM single_table"?  You've
also been confusing as to whether you want transparency of views (ie,
does a select from a view return data about the view's nominal columns
or about the underlying base table columns?).  What about cases
involving aggregates or grouping --- there may be simple Vars in the
target list, but they can hardly be thought to represent updatable values.

Also, you muttered something about inferring primary keys and number of
relations in query; seems like this feature isn't solving your problem
as far as that goes, because the set of attributes visible in the target
list isn't much help for either.

			regards, tom lane