Where to document system views?

Started by Tom Laneover 24 years ago4 messagesdocs
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#1Tom Lane
tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us

I have noticed that there is a nearly total lack of documentation of the
various predefined system views, which as of 7.2 include:

pg_indexes
pg_rules
pg_stat_activity
pg_stat_all_indexes
pg_stat_all_tables
pg_stat_database
pg_stat_sys_indexes
pg_stat_sys_tables
pg_stat_user_indexes
pg_stat_user_tables
pg_statio_all_indexes
pg_statio_all_sequences
pg_statio_all_tables
pg_statio_sys_indexes
pg_statio_sys_sequences
pg_statio_sys_tables
pg_statio_user_indexes
pg_statio_user_sequences
pg_statio_user_tables
pg_stats
pg_tables
pg_user
pg_views

The lack of docs for the pg_stat* stuff can be blamed on Jan and me,
but the other ones are of longer standing. My current thought is to
add a section somewhere that describes these views, but where? I don't
think it's quite right to document them under the System Catalogs
chapter of the Developer's Guide, since they're all intended for use
by ordinary users and dbadmins; the system itself doesn't use them.
Thoughts?

regards, tom lane

#2Tom Lane
tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
In reply to: Tom Lane (#1)
Re: Where to document system views?

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:

The pg_stat-related views ought to become part of a new section that
describes that whole deal in the first place. If there is a lot to say it
could become a new chapter in the Admin Guide (perhaps "Monitoring...").

That seems like a good plan for Jan's runtime statistics stuff. But
pg_stats doesn't quite fit with the others. Maybe I'll put it into the
"performance tips" area.

The others could become part of a chapter in the User's Guide I've been
meaning to write on "schema creation", which would describe what tables,
views, contraints, and such are. A subsection on how to reverse engineer
the created schema would fit naturally.

Seems okay. Are you thinking of getting that done for 7.2, or is this a
long-term idea?

regards, tom lane

#3Peter Eisentraut
peter_e@gmx.net
In reply to: Tom Lane (#1)
Re: Where to document system views?

Tom Lane writes:

My current thought is to add a section somewhere that describes these
views, but where? I don't think it's quite right to document them
under the System Catalogs chapter of the Developer's Guide, since
they're all intended for use by ordinary users and dbadmins; the
system itself doesn't use them. Thoughts?

The pg_stat-related views ought to become part of a new section that
describes that whole deal in the first place. If there is a lot to say it
could become a new chapter in the Admin Guide (perhaps "Monitoring...").
If there is only little to say it could be thrown into the big old "Server
Run-time Environment".

The others could become part of a chapter in the User's Guide I've been
meaning to write on "schema creation", which would describe what tables,
views, contraints, and such are. A subsection on how to reverse engineer
the created schema would fit naturally.

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net http://funkturm.homeip.net/~peter

#4Peter Eisentraut
peter_e@gmx.net
In reply to: Tom Lane (#2)
Re: Where to document system views?

Tom Lane writes:

The others could become part of a chapter in the User's Guide I've been
meaning to write on "schema creation", which would describe what tables,
views, contraints, and such are. A subsection on how to reverse engineer
the created schema would fit naturally.

Seems okay. Are you thinking of getting that done for 7.2, or is this a
long-term idea?

It's a long-term idea that should finally get done for 7.2. ;-)

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net http://funkturm.homeip.net/~peter