On Thu, 2023-03-30 at 07:06 -0500, Merlin Moncure wrote: > This ought to be impossible IMO. All libpq routines except PQexec > have an explicit expectation on format (via resultformat parameter) > that should not be overridden. PQexec ought to be explicitly > documented and wired to only request text format data.
Right now it's clearly documented[1] which formats will be returned for a given Bind message. That can be seen as the root of the problem with psql -- we are breaking the protocol by returning binary when psql can rightfully expect text.
It is a minor break, because something needed to send the "SET binary_formats='...'" command, but the protocol docs would need to be updated for sure.
> participating clients to receive GUC configured format. I do not > think that libpq's result format being able to be overridden by GUC > is a good idea at all, the library has to to participate, and I > think can be made to so so without adjusting the interface (say, by > resultFormat = 3).
Interesting idea. I suppose you'd need to specify 3 for all result columns? That is a protocol change, but wouldn't "break" older clients. The newer clients would need to make sure that they're connecting to v16+, so using the protocol version alone wouldn't be enough. Hmm.
I'm confused. How does using resultFormat=3 change anything ?
