Re: [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Use a bitmask to represent role attributes - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

José Luis Tallón-2 wrote
> On 12/23/2014 06:06 PM, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>> On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 11:34:09AM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> Stephen Frost <

> sfrost@

> > writes:
>>>> If that's the only consideration for this, well, that's certainly quite
>>>> straight-forward to change in the other direction too.  The new
>>>> function
>>>> suggested by Andres actually makes it really easy to get a textual list
>>>> of all the role attributes which a role has from the bitmask too.
>>> We could have that regardless of the representation, if the function is
>>> defined along the lines of "given a user OID, give me a text string
>>> representing the user's attributes".  However, that only helps for
>>> pg_dumpall and any other clients whose requirement is exactly satisfied
>>> by a string that fits into CREATE/ALTER USER.  The current formatting
>>> of psql's \du, for example, absolutely requires adding more client-side
>>> code every time we add a property; whether the catalog representation is
>>> bools or a bitmask really isn't going to change the pain level much
>>> there.
>> I am with Tom on this --- there is more wasted space in the 'name'
>> column pg_authid.rolname than by shoving 40 boolean values into a
>> bitmap.  Adding the complexity of a bitmap doesn't make sense here.
> Well, the code simplification alone might be worth the effort... and it
> does make adding additional attributes easier.
>
>> I also apologize for the late feedback.
>>
>> Offtopic, what I would really _love_ to see improved is our display of
>> object permissions:
>>
>>                                      Access privileges
>>      Schema |  Name  | Type  |     Access privileges     | Column privileges
>> | Policies
>>
>> --------+--------+-------+---------------------------+-------------------+----------
>>      public | crypto | table | postgres=arwdDxt/postgres+|
>> |
>>             |        |       | =r/postgres               |
>> |
>>
>> That is nasty user display ---  it looks like line noise.
>
> Hmm...  http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/sql-grant.html does
> describe the mapping from letters to permissions, but I agree that it
> could be easier for beginners.
> Any idea on how this display can be made more "human friendly"? (just
> for the sake of discussion --- I don't think I have time to do much
> about that, unfortunately)

I'm not exploring this at the moment but creating an ASCII table that looks
similar to what pgAdmin outputs would be the best solution.  While pgAdmin
would allow for interaction on the table the presentation there is likely
more user-friendly than this (not a high bar to clear...)

Ideally the column headers would go vertical for narrow columns; but even
using header abbreviations with a key would work but the number of columns
should be constant and true indicators used to denote permission.

Spatial factors (position, space/fill, size) provide stronger cues compared
to trying to read a sequence of characters.

David J.





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