Re: Binary Cursors, and the COPY command - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Oliver Jowett
Subject Re: Binary Cursors, and the COPY command
Date
Msg-id 410574F9.9020103@opencloud.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Binary Cursors, and the COPY command  (pgsql@mohawksoft.com)
Responses Re: Binary Cursors, and the COPY command  (Thomas Hallgren <thhal@mailblocks.com>)
List pgsql-hackers
pgsql@mohawksoft.com wrote:

> The only use case network byte order fixes is a BINARY COPY between
> different machine types, but in doing that, it forces anyone trying to add
> value to postgresql or create a utility that uses COPY to reimplement all
> the data type handlers outside of the database, even if they never need to
> interpret or inspect the values, because they have to do this to put them
> in network byte order.

This is not true if you happen to be using Java on the client side, 
which has no idea (unless you grot around in the guts of the JVM) what 
the native byte order is. This actually means that Java clients have the 
opposite problem -- it's a lot of work to try to use the 7.3-style 
binary formats.

> I would say that the history of the word "BINARY" would tend more to
> indicate incompatible machine specific data.

"Binary" implies "not plaintext" to me..

What about binary parameters in Bind or binary resultsets from Execute? 
They follow the same format as binary COPY values. Are you suggesting 
those should be changed too?

-O


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