support for ltree

Started by Michael Shapiroalmost 11 years ago6 messagesgeneral
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#1Michael Shapiro
mshapiro51@gmail.com

I am wondering if the contributed module <ltree> will always be part of
Postgres? Do contributed modules ever get absorbed into Postgres itself?

The reason I am asking is that, although ltree seems to have been a
contributed module since at least 8.3, how can one know if it will always
be part of subsequent versions of Postgres?

Are there any plans to make <ltree> a built-in datatype, like <json>,
o<xml>, or the various Geometric Types (eg, <polygon>)?

Michael Shapiro
Senior Systems Engineer
National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)

#2Melvin Davidson
melvin6925@gmail.com
In reply to: Michael Shapiro (#1)
Re: support for ltree

Geometric Data Types have been in PostgreSQL for quite a while.
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/interactive/datatype-geometric.html

JSON have been in PostgreSQL since 9.2 and it's functionality increases
with each new version.
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/interactive/datatype-json.html

AFAIK, Most of the contributed modules have been changed into EXTENSIONs
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/interactive/extend-extensions.html

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/interactive/external-extensions.html

Check the /share/contrib and /share/extension directories under the
PostgreSQL main directory to see what is available for your version.

On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 8:22 AM, Michael Shapiro <mshapiro51@gmail.com>
wrote:

I am wondering if the contributed module <ltree> will always be part of
Postgres? Do contributed modules ever get absorbed into Postgres itself?

The reason I am asking is that, although ltree seems to have been a
contributed module since at least 8.3, how can one know if it will always
be part of subsequent versions of Postgres?

Are there any plans to make <ltree> a built-in datatype, like <json>,
o<xml>, or the various Geometric Types (eg, <polygon>)?

Michael Shapiro
Senior Systems Engineer
National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)

--
*Melvin Davidson*
I reserve the right to fantasize. Whether or not you
wish to share my fantasy is entirely up to you.

#3Michael Shapiro
mshapiro51@gmail.com
In reply to: Melvin Davidson (#2)
Re: support for ltree

Hi Melvin,

Thanks for this response. It still leave my question unanswered. I should
rephrase it -- will <ltree> become a native datatype in Postgres (as
opposed to remaining an extension). Are there any plans to make <ltree> a
native datatype?

Michael

On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 7:58 AM, Melvin Davidson <melvin6925@gmail.com>
wrote:

Show quoted text

Geometric Data Types have been in PostgreSQL for quite a while.
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/interactive/datatype-geometric.html

JSON have been in PostgreSQL since 9.2 and it's functionality increases
with each new version.
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/interactive/datatype-json.html

AFAIK, Most of the contributed modules have been changed into EXTENSIONs
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/interactive/extend-extensions.html

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/interactive/external-extensions.html

Check the /share/contrib and /share/extension directories under the
PostgreSQL main directory to see what is available for your version.

On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 8:22 AM, Michael Shapiro <mshapiro51@gmail.com>
wrote:

I am wondering if the contributed module <ltree> will always be part of
Postgres? Do contributed modules ever get absorbed into Postgres itself?

The reason I am asking is that, although ltree seems to have been a
contributed module since at least 8.3, how can one know if it will always
be part of subsequent versions of Postgres?

Are there any plans to make <ltree> a built-in datatype, like <json>,
o<xml>, or the various Geometric Types (eg, <polygon>)?

Michael Shapiro
Senior Systems Engineer
National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)

--
*Melvin Davidson*
I reserve the right to fantasize. Whether or not you
wish to share my fantasy is entirely up to you.

#4David G. Johnston
david.g.johnston@gmail.com
In reply to: Michael Shapiro (#3)
Re: support for ltree

On Friday, June 12, 2015, Michael Shapiro <mshapiro51@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Melvin,

Thanks for this response. It still leave my question unanswered. I should
rephrase it -- will <ltree> become a native datatype in Postgres (as
opposed to remaining an extension). Are there any plans to make <ltree> a
native datatype?

Instead of asking people to guess about the future why don't you explain
what motivated you to ask the question in the first place?

David J.

#5David G. Johnston
david.g.johnston@gmail.com
In reply to: Michael Shapiro (#1)
Re: support for ltree

On Friday, June 12, 2015, Michael Shapiro <mshapiro51@gmail.com> wrote:

The reason I am asking is that, although ltree seems to have been a
contributed module since at least 8.3, how can one know if it will always
be part of subsequent versions of Postgres?

Whether contrib, core, or an external extension you like will always have
ltree available to you.

It is also open source so you could update and compile it yourself in a
worse case scenario.

The difference between core and contrib is the subject of many
discussions but anything there now is almost guaranteed to be in one or the
other indefinitely.

David J.

#6Tom Lane
tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
In reply to: Michael Shapiro (#3)
Re: support for ltree

Michael Shapiro <mshapiro51@gmail.com> writes:

Thanks for this response. It still leave my question unanswered. I should
rephrase it -- will <ltree> become a native datatype in Postgres (as
opposed to remaining an extension). Are there any plans to make <ltree> a
native datatype?

No. That is not the same as it being unsupported. Postgres is built
around the concept of being extensible, and one important aspect of that
is having some "standard" extensions as test cases. ltree seems to fit
that category quite well, in that it's useful for some people but not so
widely used as to need to be in core.

(Even if there were a credible argument for putting ltree in core, I doubt
it would win out over backwards-compatibility concerns. We've found in
the past that moving things into core is not exactly transparent.)

regards, tom lane

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