All,
So, from my perspective is that the main issue with the \d commands is
that they are not accessible from interfaces other than psql. Often,
you have to write a big, hairy, pg-version-specific query to make them
happen. information_schema is nice but (a) it's not in the default
search path, and (b) it doesn't show everything. Just try to get your
list of FKs out of it. Think of the number of people who use "echo
commands" just to extract the query for the \d commands.
This was why we (well, mainly Andrew Geirth) developed newsysviews. But
you know how that went.
I think that users could live with other syntax (like SELECT name FROM
pg_tables()) if the result returned were intuitive (user tables only)
and didn't change over postgres versions much. As Andrew points out,
SQLServer users seem to have no problem calling sp_* commands.
I think it's very important, as Haas says, to consider that whatever we
do in this arena, we'll be living with it forever, so let's not make the
\dv vs. \df mistake again, ok?
-- -- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://www.pgexperts.com
