Re: Move Section 9.27.7 (Data Object Management Functions) to System Information Chapter - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From David G. Johnston
Subject Re: Move Section 9.27.7 (Data Object Management Functions) to System Information Chapter
Date
Msg-id CAKFQuwb=A-OspAhFe=orTdtiesBFZqD5+yc_Y0q3VNMdp70ZpA@mail.gmail.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Move Section 9.27.7 (Data Object Management Functions) to System Information Chapter  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
Responses Re: Move Section 9.27.7 (Data Object Management Functions) to System Information Chapter
List pgsql-hackers
On Thu, Jul 14, 2022 at 3:57 PM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
> On Mon, Apr 25, 2022 at 08:33:47AM -0700, David G. Johnston wrote:
>> Both the location and name of the linked to section make no sense to me:
>> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/functions-admin.html#
>> FUNCTIONS-ADMIN-DBOBJECT
>> Neither of the tables listed there manage (cause to change) anything.  They are
>> pure informational functions - size and path of objects respectively.  It
>> belongs in the previous chapter "System Information Functions and Operators"
>> with a different name.

> So, the section title is:
>       9.27.7. Database Object Management Functions
> I think the idea is that they _help_ to manage database objects by
> reporting their size or location.  I do think it is in the right
> chapter, but maybe needs a better title?  I can't think of one.

I'm hesitant to move functions to a different documentation page
without a really solid reason.  Just a couple days ago I fielded a
complaint from somebody who couldn't find string_to_array anymore
because we'd moved it from "array functions" to "string functions".

I'd be the first to say that the division between 9.26 and 9.27 is
pretty arbitrary ... but without a clearer demarcation rule,
moving functions between the two pages seems more likely to
add confusion than subtract it.


I'm not going to fight the prevailing winds on this one, much...but I've probably been sitting on this annoyance for years since I use the ToC to find stuff fairly quickly in the docs.  This seems much more clear to me than a function than deciding whether a function that converts a string into an array belongs in the string chapter or the array chapter.

On a related note, why itemize 9.27 in the table of contents but not 9.26?

I would ask that we at least rename it to:

Disk Usage Functions

Since this would show in the ToC finding the name of the functions that allow one to compute disk usage, which is a question I probably see once a year, and what motivates this request, would be more likely to be found without skimming the entire 9.26 chapter (since I cannot see those table heading in the ToC) and not finding it and then stumbling upon in on a table the only deals with sizes but whose headers says nothing about sizes.

David J.

pgsql-hackers by date:

Previous
From: "David G. Johnston"
Date:
Subject: Re: MERGE and parsing with prepared statements
Next
From: Justin Pryzby
Date:
Subject: Re: MERGE and parsing with prepared statements