Re: jsonb and nested hstore - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

On 03/06/2014 08:16 AM, Oleg Bartunov wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 12:43 PM, Peter Geoghegan <pg@heroku.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 12:23 AM, Teodor Sigaev <teodor@sigaev.ru> wrote:
>>> That's possible to introduce GUC variable for i/o functions which will
>>> control old "bug-to-bug" behavior. IMHO, this is much better option that
>>> stopping hstore development or split hstore to two branches.
>> A GUC that controls i/o functions is generally considered to be an
>> unacceptable hack.
>>
>> In what sense are we really stopping hstore development if hstore2
>> lives as jsonb? I have a hard time imagining someone dealing with the
>> incompatibility that a user-facing hstore2 would introduce, while
>> still preferring hstore syntax over json syntax given the choice.
>> There are very rich facilities for manipulating json available in
>> every programming language. The same is not true of hstore.
>>
>> Having looked at the issue today, I think that the amount of redundant
>> code between a hstore2 in core as jsonb and hstore1 will be
>> acceptable. The advantages of making a clean-break in having to
>> support the legacy hstore disk format strengthen the case for doing so
>> too.
> Heh, let's not to do an implusive decision about hstore2. I agree,
> that jsonb has
> a lot of facilities, but don't forget, that json(b) has to follow standard and
> in that sense it's more constrained than hstore, which we could further
> develop to support some interesting features, which will never be implemented
> in json(b).  Also,  it'd be a bit awkward after working on nested
> hstore and declaring it
> on several conferences (Engine Yard has sponsored part of our hstore
> work), suddenly
> break people expectation and say, that our work has moved to core to
> provide json
> some very cool features, good bye, hstore users :(   I'm afraid people
> will not understand us.
>


Oleg,

I hear you, and largely agree, as long as the compatibility issue is 
solved. If it's not, I think inventing a new hstore2 type is probably a 
lousy way to go.

For good or ill, the world has pretty much settled on wanting to use 
json for lightweight treeish data. That's where we'll get the most 
impact. Virtually every programming language (including Perl) has good 
support for json.

I'm not sure what the constraints of json that you might want to break 
are. Perhaps you'd like to specify.

Whatever we do, rest assured your work won't go to waste.

cheers

andrew