Greg,
> Well, who really *does* need these? After all, end users should be
> using an interface of some sort. (DBD::Pg, phpPgAdmin, psql, etc). It's
> the job of the people writing those interfaces to know the system
> catalogs well and present them to the users in a pretty fashion. If
> people want an "easy" way to look up the information, they use an
> interface. If not, they should learn the system catalogs.
> /devilsadvocate
Well, because of who worked on it we were primarily thinking of custom
applications developers and integrators, who fall somewhere between "dumb
user" and "pg hacker", and thus need an interface which falls between
"pgAdmin" and "pg_class". Also database designers (not all database
designers like using GUIs).
And, as Lance points out, these system views would help as a diagnostic view
for support engineers. Actually, I'll second that; I've had cause to
recommend the CVS system views more than a dozen times to pgsql newbies on
IRC. For example, there is an easy query you can do using the new system
views (thanks, Andrew!) to check what unindexed foriegn keys you have.
So, "who would they be useful to?" is "everyone *except* the people on this
list."
--
--Josh
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco
