On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 11:51 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
>> On mån, 2010-12-13 at 10:55 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> We don't normally invent specialized syntax for a specific datatype.
>>> Not even if it's in core.
>
>> I think the idea would be to make associative arrays a kind of
>> second-order object like arrays, instead of a data type.
>
> I haven't actually figured out what the benefit would be, other than
> buzzword compliance and a chance to invent some random nonstandard
> syntax. If the element values all have to be the same type, you've
> basically got hstore.
Not exactly, because in hstore all the element values have to be,
specifically, text. Having hstores of other kinds of objects would,
presumably, be useful.
> If they are allowed to be different types,
> what have you got but a record? Surely SQL can do composite types
> already.
I think I mostly agree with this.
--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
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