Tom Lane wrote:
Randall Smith <randall@xxxxxx> writes:
I'm an advocate of Postgresql and usually tout SQL compliance as a
strength, so it bothers me that this is not in line to be corrected.
It's not that it's not on the radar screen, it's just that no one sees
a way to do it that's going to be acceptable. We're not willing to give
up the current behavior, both for backwards-compatibility reasons and
because most of us just plain like it better (ALL UPPER CASE IS UGLY AND
HARDER TO READ...). So we'd need to support both, and that's hard.
Easy answers like "make it a configuration option" don't work because
they break too much stuff, including a whole lot of client-side code
that we don't control.
There are a couple of long threads in the pghackers archives discussing
pros and cons of different possibilities, if you're interested.
regards, tom lane
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TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Thanks Tom. I understand your points and I gather that the cost of
making the change (even as an option) outweighs the benefits of SQL
conformance for the developers. Though I'm still of the same opinion.
I'll give the pghackers forum a visit and since I'm already on the
subject here, I'll make a direct comparison of the situation.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser is known to have poor support
for the CSS standard, but refuses to fix it saying that it's too
difficult and would break existing websites. Many developers, myself
included, prefer to code to the standard and have the html/css render
correctly in all browsers. In the long run, it's better to do it right
even if that means breaking things today. If the standard is good (there
are poor standards), there's no reason to not use the standard.
Thanks again.
Randall
