Fix misleading references to columns in GRANT/REVOKE summaries

Started by David Fetterabout 19 years ago10 messagesdocs
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#1David Fetter
david@fetter.org

Folks,

Per a question Alexey Parshin asked in the IRC channel, I'm attaching
a patch to the GRANT and REVOKE syntax summaries which replaces the
misleading word "column" with "parameter." "Column" is misleading
because it could be read to imply a column-level GRANT/REVOKE, which
we don't have yet.

Cheers,
D
--
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666
Skype: davidfetter

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Attachments:

fix_grant_revoke.difftext/plain; charset=us-asciiDownload+6-6
#2Tom Lane
tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
In reply to: David Fetter (#1)
Re: Fix misleading references to columns in GRANT/REVOKE summaries

David Fetter <david@fetter.org> writes:

Per a question Alexey Parshin asked in the IRC channel, I'm attaching
a patch to the GRANT and REVOKE syntax summaries which replaces the
misleading word "column" with "parameter." "Column" is misleading
because it could be read to imply a column-level GRANT/REVOKE, which
we don't have yet.

Apparently it's so misleading that you didn't understand it either.
The entire *point* of that paragraph is that we don't have the
feature. This proposed change is surely not an improvement...

regards, tom lane

#3Russell Smith
mr-russ@pws.com.au
In reply to: Tom Lane (#2)
Re: [DOCS] Fix misleading references to columns in GRANT/REVOKE summaries

Tom Lane wrote:

David Fetter <david@fetter.org> writes:

Per a question Alexey Parshin asked in the IRC channel, I'm attaching
a patch to the GRANT and REVOKE syntax summaries which replaces the
misleading word "column" with "parameter." "Column" is misleading
because it could be read to imply a column-level GRANT/REVOKE, which
we don't have yet.

Apparently it's so misleading that you didn't understand it either.
The entire *point* of that paragraph is that we don't have the
feature. This proposed change is surely not an improvement...

Maybe removing the entire example would be more helpful. I don't find
it clear to have a command outline in a compatibility block.

Show quoted text

regards, tom lane

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#4Tom Lane
tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
In reply to: Russell Smith (#3)
Re: [PATCHES] Fix misleading references to columns in GRANT/REVOKE summaries

Russell Smith <mr-russ@pws.com.au> writes:

Tom Lane wrote:

The entire *point* of that paragraph is that we don't have the
feature. This proposed change is surely not an improvement...

Maybe removing the entire example would be more helpful. I don't find
it clear to have a command outline in a compatibility block.

True, there doesn't seem to be any point in providing a full syntax
summary rather than just saying "the SQL spec says you can grant
privileges on columns but we don't support that yet".

regards, tom lane

#5Bruce Momjian
bruce@momjian.us
In reply to: Tom Lane (#4)
Re: [PATCHES] Fix misleading references to columns in GRANT/REVOKE summaries

Tom Lane wrote:

Russell Smith <mr-russ@pws.com.au> writes:

Tom Lane wrote:

The entire *point* of that paragraph is that we don't have the
feature. This proposed change is surely not an improvement...

Maybe removing the entire example would be more helpful. I don't find
it clear to have a command outline in a compatibility block.

True, there doesn't seem to be any point in providing a full syntax
summary rather than just saying "the SQL spec says you can grant
privileges on columns but we don't support that yet".

Agreed. Patch attached and applied. I don't see any other cases of
this in our documentation.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com

+ If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

Attachments:

/rtmp/difftext/x-diffDownload+21-21
#6Peter Eisentraut
peter_e@gmx.net
In reply to: Tom Lane (#4)
Re: [PATCHES] Fix misleading references to columns in GRANT/REVOKE summaries

Tom Lane wrote:

True, there doesn't seem to be any point in providing a full syntax
summary rather than just saying "the SQL spec says you can grant
privileges on columns but we don't support that yet".

I think it's pretty useful if people see a command of this form from
some other implementation and don't know what it means.

--
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/

#7Peter Eisentraut
peter_e@gmx.net
In reply to: Bruce Momjian (#5)
Re: [PATCHES] Fix misleading references to columns in GRANT/REVOKE summaries

Bruce Momjian wrote:

True, there doesn't seem to be any point in providing a full syntax
summary rather than just saying "the SQL spec says you can grant
privileges on columns but we don't support that yet".

Agreed. Patch attached and applied. I don't see any other cases of
this in our documentation.

That doesn't mean this one isn't useful. Please revert this.

--
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/

#8Bruce Momjian
bruce@momjian.us
In reply to: Peter Eisentraut (#7)
Re: [PATCHES] Fix misleading references to columns in GRANT/REVOKE summaries

Peter Eisentraut wrote:

Bruce Momjian wrote:

True, there doesn't seem to be any point in providing a full syntax
summary rather than just saying "the SQL spec says you can grant
privileges on columns but we don't support that yet".

Agreed. Patch attached and applied. I don't see any other cases of
this in our documentation.

That doesn't mean this one isn't useful. Please revert this.

Well, Tom and I thought it caused confusion, as did the person reporting
the confusion. You saying to revert it isn't enough.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com

+ If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

#9Tom Lane
tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
In reply to: Bruce Momjian (#8)
Re: [PATCHES] Fix misleading references to columns in GRANT/REVOKE summaries

Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:

Peter Eisentraut wrote:

That doesn't mean this one isn't useful. Please revert this.

Well, Tom and I thought it caused confusion, as did the person reporting
the confusion. You saying to revert it isn't enough.

A possible compromise is to describe or show the syntax in some informal
form, so that it didn't look like one of the <synopsis> sections we use
for supported syntax. I'm not sure what that would look like exactly,
but I do see merit in both sides of this discussion...

regards, tom lane

#10Bruce Momjian
bruce@momjian.us
In reply to: Tom Lane (#9)
Re: [PATCHES] Fix misleading references to columns in GRANT/REVOKE summaries

Tom Lane wrote:

Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:

Peter Eisentraut wrote:

That doesn't mean this one isn't useful. Please revert this.

Well, Tom and I thought it caused confusion, as did the person reporting
the confusion. You saying to revert it isn't enough.

A possible compromise is to describe or show the syntax in some informal
form, so that it didn't look like one of the <synopsis> sections we use
for supported syntax. I'm not sure what that would look like exactly,
but I do see merit in both sides of this discussion...

I am all for us describing how we don't match the SQL spec, but just
showing the syntax doesn't seem to help people understand how we don't
match the spec, does it? Are there more details to column-level GRANT
except saying we don't support it?

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com

+ If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +