Mark Woodward wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Wouldn't the "COPY (select ...) TO STDOUT" format being discussed solve
>>> this for free?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> It won't solve it in the general case for clients that expect a result
>> set. ISTM that "use a cursor" is a perfectly reasonable answer, though.
>>
>
> I'm not sure I agree -- surprise!
>
> psql is often used as a command line tool and using a cursor is not
> acceptable.
>
> Granted, with an unaligned output, perhaps psql should not buffer the
> WHOLE result at once, but without rewriting that behavior, a COPY from
> query may be close enough.
>
>
You have missed my point. Surprise!
I didn't say it wasn't OK in the psql case, I said it wasn't helpful in
the case of *other* libpq clients.
Expecting clients generally to split and interpret COPY output is not
reasonable, but if they want large result sets they should use a cursor.
cheers
andrew
