TODO: You can alter it, but you can't view it - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

All,

While working on some database maintenance, I was just tripped up by the 
fact that there is no good way to query reloptions for tables.  By "no 
good way" I mean "no way which does not involve UNNEST and regexps or 
procedural code".

This puts us in the wierd place that while one can ALTER various 
reloptions, one cannot check them to see if they *need* to be altered. 
That's a particularly bad situation given that changing reloptions 
requires a lock on the table (though less of one in 9.1).

I propose that we have an additional system view, pg_class_reloptions 
(or pg_table_reloptions if reloptions aren't relevant for views and 
indexes).  It would have the following columns:

relid
name    
setting_numeric
setting_boolean
setting_text

comments/objections/something I missed in the internal functions or 9.1 
patches which already does this?

--                                   -- Josh Berkus                                     PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
                           http://www.pgexperts.com