OBJECT_ATTRIBUTE is useless (or: ALTER TYPE vs ALTER TABLE for composites)

Started by Alvaro Herreraabout 11 years ago6 messageshackers
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#1Alvaro Herrera
alvherre@2ndquadrant.com

I found that the OBJECT_ATTRIBUTE symbol is useless. I can just remove
it and replace it with OBJECT_COLUMN, and everything continues to work;
no test fails that I can find.

I thought we had a prohibition against ALTER TABLE when used on
composites, but it's not as severe as I thought. The following commands
fail in master:

ALTER TABLE comptype RENAME TO comptype2; -- HINT: Use ALTER TYPE
ALTER TABLE comptype SET SCHEMA sch; -- HINT: Use ALTER TYPE

However, the following command works in master:

ALTER TABLE comptype RENAME COLUMN a TO b;
and has the same effect as this:
ALTER TYPE comptype RENAME ATTRIBUTE a TO b;

The RENAME ATTTRIBUTE case in RenameStmt is the only thing currently
using OBJECT_ATTRIBUTE; therefore, since in precisely that case we do
not prohibit using ALTER TABLE, we can just remove OBJECT_ATTRIBUTE
completely. That leads to the attached patch, which changes no test
result at all.

This symbol was added in

commit e440e12c562432a2a695b8054964fb34e3bd823e
Author: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
Date: Sun Sep 26 14:41:03 2010 +0300

Add ALTER TYPE ... ADD/DROP/ALTER/RENAME ATTRIBUTE

Like with tables, this also requires allowing the existence of
composite types with zero attributes.

reviewed by KaiGai Kohei

Thoughts?

--
�lvaro Herrera http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services

Attachments:

remove-objattr.patchtext/x-diff; charset=us-asciiDownload+1-8
#2KaiGai Kohei
kaigai@ak.jp.nec.com
In reply to: Alvaro Herrera (#1)
Re: OBJECT_ATTRIBUTE is useless (or: ALTER TYPE vs ALTER TABLE for composites)

Please see check_object_ownership(). It checks relation's ownership
if OBJECT_COLUMN, however, type's ownership is the correct check if
OBJECT_ATTRIBUTE.

--
NEC OSS Promotion Center / PG-Strom Project
KaiGai Kohei <kaigai@ak.jp.nec.com>

-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-hackers-owner@postgresql.org
[mailto:pgsql-hackers-owner@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of Alvaro Herrera
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2015 4:02 AM
To: Pg Hackers; Peter Eisentraut
Subject: [HACKERS] OBJECT_ATTRIBUTE is useless (or: ALTER TYPE vs ALTER TABLE
for composites)

I found that the OBJECT_ATTRIBUTE symbol is useless. I can just remove
it and replace it with OBJECT_COLUMN, and everything continues to work;
no test fails that I can find.

I thought we had a prohibition against ALTER TABLE when used on
composites, but it's not as severe as I thought. The following commands
fail in master:

ALTER TABLE comptype RENAME TO comptype2; -- HINT: Use ALTER TYPE
ALTER TABLE comptype SET SCHEMA sch; -- HINT: Use ALTER TYPE

However, the following command works in master:

ALTER TABLE comptype RENAME COLUMN a TO b;
and has the same effect as this:
ALTER TYPE comptype RENAME ATTRIBUTE a TO b;

The RENAME ATTTRIBUTE case in RenameStmt is the only thing currently
using OBJECT_ATTRIBUTE; therefore, since in precisely that case we do
not prohibit using ALTER TABLE, we can just remove OBJECT_ATTRIBUTE
completely. That leads to the attached patch, which changes no test
result at all.

This symbol was added in

commit e440e12c562432a2a695b8054964fb34e3bd823e
Author: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
Date: Sun Sep 26 14:41:03 2010 +0300

Add ALTER TYPE ... ADD/DROP/ALTER/RENAME ATTRIBUTE

Like with tables, this also requires allowing the existence of
composite types with zero attributes.

reviewed by KaiGai Kohei

Thoughts?

--
Álvaro Herrera http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services

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#3Alvaro Herrera
alvherre@2ndquadrant.com
In reply to: KaiGai Kohei (#2)
Re: OBJECT_ATTRIBUTE is useless (or: ALTER TYPE vs ALTER TABLE for composites)

Kouhei Kaigai wrote:

Please see check_object_ownership(). It checks relation's ownership
if OBJECT_COLUMN, however, type's ownership is the correct check if
OBJECT_ATTRIBUTE.

Hmm. Is there any case where the two are different?

--
�lvaro Herrera http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services

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#4KaiGai Kohei
kaigai@ak.jp.nec.com
In reply to: Alvaro Herrera (#3)
Re: OBJECT_ATTRIBUTE is useless (or: ALTER TYPE vs ALTER TABLE for composites)

Kouhei Kaigai wrote:

Please see check_object_ownership(). It checks relation's ownership
if OBJECT_COLUMN, however, type's ownership is the correct check if
OBJECT_ATTRIBUTE.

Hmm. Is there any case where the two are different?

AlterObjectTypeCommandTag()?

OBJECT_ATTRIBUTE makes "ALTER TYPE" tag, but "ALTER COLUMN" tag is
made with OBJECT_COLUMN.

Above two cases are all I could found.

Thanks,
--
NEC OSS Promotion Center / PG-Strom Project
KaiGai Kohei <kaigai@ak.jp.nec.com>

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#5Peter Eisentraut
peter_e@gmx.net
In reply to: Alvaro Herrera (#1)
Re: OBJECT_ATTRIBUTE is useless (or: ALTER TYPE vs ALTER TABLE for composites)

On 2/23/15 2:01 PM, Alvaro Herrera wrote:

I found that the OBJECT_ATTRIBUTE symbol is useless. I can just remove
it and replace it with OBJECT_COLUMN, and everything continues to work;
no test fails that I can find.

It appears that it would change the command tag from ALTER TYPE to ALTER
TABLE.

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#6Alvaro Herrera
alvherre@2ndquadrant.com
In reply to: Peter Eisentraut (#5)
Re: OBJECT_ATTRIBUTE is useless (or: ALTER TYPE vs ALTER TABLE for composites)

Peter Eisentraut wrote:

On 2/23/15 2:01 PM, Alvaro Herrera wrote:

I found that the OBJECT_ATTRIBUTE symbol is useless. I can just remove
it and replace it with OBJECT_COLUMN, and everything continues to work;
no test fails that I can find.

It appears that it would change the command tag from ALTER TYPE to ALTER
TABLE.

Ah, that it does. I guess I unconsciously believed that command tags
would be part of regression tests expected output, but clearly they are
not.

I don't think this change is all that terrible, but I've seen past
discussions about changing command type and they aren't pretty, so I
will drop this.

--
�lvaro Herrera http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services

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