Re: CREATE SYNONYM ... - Mailing list pgsql-patches

From Alvaro Herrera
Subject Re: CREATE SYNONYM ...
Date
Msg-id 20060307222840.GD8897@surnet.cl
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: CREATE SYNONYM ...  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
Responses Re: CREATE SYNONYM ...
Re: CREATE SYNONYM ...
List pgsql-patches
Tom Lane wrote:

> (Actually, I don't think the case for table synonyms has been made
> adequately either; "Oracle has it" is *not* enough reason to take on
> another feature that we'll have to maintain forever, especially given
> that we're being told that one of the major use-cases for synonyms
> isn't going to be supported.  AFAICS this patch does nothing you
> couldn't do much better with a quick search-and-replace over your
> application code.  In short, I remain unsold.)

What I don't really understand is what part of this cannot be achieved
by changing the search_path.  The only case I can think of is when you
have tables A and B in schemas R and S, but you want to use R.A and S.B.
So there's no way to change search_path for this.  But is this really
the intended use case?

I wonder whether synonyms were introduced in Oracle because of that idea
of theirs that each user has its own schema, and can access that schema
only; so to use a table in another schema you need to create a synonym.
We don't have that limitation so we don't need that usage either.

--
Alvaro Herrera                                http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support

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