On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 3:28 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Lonni J Friedman <netllama@xxxxxxxxx> writes: >> nightly=# ALTER SERVER cuda_db10 OPTIONS (SET use_remote_estimate 'true') ; >> ERROR: option "use_remote_estimate" not found > >> Am I doing something wrong, or is this a bug? > > [ experiments... ] You need to say ADD, not SET, to add a new option to > the list. SET might more appropriately be spelled REPLACE, because it > requires that the object already have a defined value for the option, > which will be replaced. > > Our documentation appears not to disclose this fine point, but a look > at the SQL-MED standard says it's operating per spec. The standard also > says that ADD is an error if the option is already defined, which is a > bit more defensible, but still not exactly what I'd call user-friendly. > And the error we issue for that case is pretty misleading too: > > regression=# ALTER SERVER cuda_db10 OPTIONS (use_remote_estimate 'true') ; > ALTER SERVER > regression=# ALTER SERVER cuda_db10 OPTIONS (use_remote_estimate 'false') ; > ERROR: option "use_remote_estimate" provided more than once > > I think we could do with both more documentation, and better error > messages for these cases. In the SET-where-you-should-use-ADD case, > perhaps > > ERROR: option "use_remote_estimate" has not been set > HINT: Use ADD not SET to define an option that wasn't already set. > > In the ADD-where-you-should-use-SET case, perhaps > > ERROR: option "use_remote_estimate" is already set > HINT: Use SET not ADD to change an option's value. > > The "provided more than once" wording would be appropriate if the same > option is specified more than once in the command text, but I'm not sure > that it's worth the trouble to detect that case. > > Thoughts, better wordings? Thanks Tom, I've confirmed that using ADD was the solution. I think your suggested updated ERROR & HINT text is an excellent improvement. It definitely would have given me the clue I was missing earlier. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
