[PostGIS] #252: Text autocasting behavior of geography is breaking geometry functionality

[PostGIS-4]

#252: Text autocasting behavior of geography is breaking geometry functionality
---------------------+------------------------------------------------------
 Reporter:  robe     |       Owner:  pramsey      
     Type:  defect   |      Status:  new          
 Priority:  medium   |   Milestone:  postgis 1.5.0
Component:  postgis  |     Version:  trunk        
 Keywords:           |  
---------------------+------------------------------------------------------
 I have always been against these autocasts especially the text ones.
 While I would like to remove it for geometry, that will of course break
 existing functionality, but PLEASE remove it for geography.

 This breaks
 SELECT ST_AsBinary('POINT(1 2)');

 and gives this error

 ERROR:  function st_asbinary(unknown) is not unique
 LINE 1: SELECT ST_AsBinary('POINT(1 2)')
                ^
 HINT:  Could not choose a best candidate function. You might need to add
 explicit type casts.

--
Ticket URL: <http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/252>
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[PostGIS-4]

#252: Text autocasting behavior of geography is breaking geometry functionality
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
  Reporter:  robe     |       Owner:  pramsey      
      Type:  defect   |      Status:  new          
  Priority:  medium   |   Milestone:  postgis 1.5.0
 Component:  postgis  |     Version:  trunk        
Resolution:           |    Keywords:              
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Comment (by pramsey):

 How to disable it?

--
Ticket URL: <http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/252#comment:1>
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[PostGIS-4]

#252: Text autocasting behavior of geography is breaking geometry functionality
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
  Reporter:  robe     |       Owner:  pramsey      
      Type:  defect   |      Status:  new          
  Priority:  medium   |   Milestone:  postgis 1.5.0
 Component:  postgis  |     Version:  trunk        
Resolution:           |    Keywords:              
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Comment (by robe):

 Okay this is a more serious problem than I thought.  We don't have an
 autocast for text.  Its the fact that

 'POINT(1..)' is unknown and not text.

 SELECT ST_AsBinary('POINT(1 3)'::text)

 works fine. I guess we'll have the same issue with WKTRaster.  Not sure
 the solution to this without resorting to different naming :(

--
Ticket URL: <http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/252#comment:2>
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[PostGIS-4]

#252: Text autocasting behavior of geography is breaking geometry functionality
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
  Reporter:  robe     |       Owner:  pramsey      
      Type:  defect   |      Status:  new          
  Priority:  medium   |   Milestone:  postgis 1.5.0
 Component:  postgis  |     Version:  trunk        
Resolution:           |    Keywords:              
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Comment (by robe):

 It appears there is one other solution besides renaming functions and that
 is to declare yet another function that in the face of unknown trumps the
 other functions.


 After studying the docs, it appears to me that the text/varcahr datatype
 is hard-wired to rank higher as an appropriate CAST for unknown than any
 other data type (or at least in 8.4).
 http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/interactive/typeconv-func.html (see
 bullet 4 item d)
 -- have to test 8.3 though docs of 8.3 suggest the same)

 The below appears to solve the problem (for ST_AsBinary and I presume we
 could do the same for others where we will have name clashes).  I've only
 tested on 8.4 (not yet on 8.3).

 Alternatively we could do nothing and proclaim this is a bad habit of
 people anyway and force them to change their ways by breaking their
 malformed apps.  It might make many people mad, but they might thank us in
 the long run (or maybe not :))


 {{{
 CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION st_asbinary(text)
   RETURNS bytea AS
 $$ SELECT st_asbinary($1::geometry);  $$
   LANGUAGE 'sql' IMMUTABLE STRICT
   COST 1;
 }}}

 Does anyone see a problem with the aforementioned solution.

--
Ticket URL: <http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/252#comment:3>
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[Leticia-11]

Que susto!.  Los chicos creen que hay una sola de acceder al sitio (sin
autenticación), pero Pablo te dio como acceder por token, de hecho es lo que
hiciste la semana pasada cuando Pablo de dio mi DNI, etc.

Les mandas eso. En ese caso es donde tenemos errores. Ese que viste.

Gracias,
Leticia


-----Original Message-----
From: postgis-devel-bounces@...
[mailto:postgis-devel-bounces@...] On Behalf Of PostGIS
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 8:00 AM
Cc: postgis-devel@...
Subject: Re: [postgis-devel] [PostGIS] #252: Text autocasting behavior of
geography is breaking geometry functionality

#252: Text autocasting behavior of geography is breaking geometry
functionality
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
  Reporter:  robe     |       Owner:  pramsey      
      Type:  defect   |      Status:  new          
  Priority:  medium   |   Milestone:  postgis 1.5.0
 Component:  postgis  |     Version:  trunk        
Resolution:           |    Keywords:              
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Comment (by robe):

 It appears there is one other solution besides renaming functions and that
 is to declare yet another function that in the face of unknown trumps the
 other functions.


 After studying the docs, it appears to me that the text/varcahr datatype
 is hard-wired to rank higher as an appropriate CAST for unknown than any
 other data type (or at least in 8.4).
 http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/interactive/typeconv-func.html (see
 bullet 4 item d)
 -- have to test 8.3 though docs of 8.3 suggest the same)

 The below appears to solve the problem (for ST_AsBinary and I presume we
 could do the same for others where we will have name clashes).  I've only
 tested on 8.4 (not yet on 8.3).

 Alternatively we could do nothing and proclaim this is a bad habit of
 people anyway and force them to change their ways by breaking their
 malformed apps.  It might make many people mad, but they might thank us in
 the long run (or maybe not :))


 {{{
 CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION st_asbinary(text)
   RETURNS bytea AS
 $$ SELECT st_asbinary($1::geometry);  $$
   LANGUAGE 'sql' IMMUTABLE STRICT
   COST 1;
 }}}

 Does anyone see a problem with the aforementioned solution.

--
Ticket URL: <http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/252#comment:3>
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[PostGIS-4]

#252: Text autocasting behavior of geography is breaking geometry functionality
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
  Reporter:  robe     |       Owner:  pramsey      
      Type:  defect   |      Status:  new          
  Priority:  medium   |   Milestone:  postgis 1.5.0
 Component:  postgis  |     Version:  trunk        
Resolution:           |    Keywords:              
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Comment (by kneufeld):

 Your proposed function does seem to solve the problem, but we would need
 to add a textual overload for every function that also has a geography
 overload.

 ie. this also currently breaks.
 SELECT ST_AsText('POINT(1 3)');

 This means that geography would never benefit from the unknown->text
 autocast (Not that it's a big deal, cuz I too am against autocasts
 anyway).  Additionally, whenever a new geography function was added,
 developers would need to remember to add the textual overide to point to
 the geometry method, avoiding ambiguity.

 You are right. Not having these functions would likely be a breaking
 change for many applications.

 ... or we skip a 1.5 release and go straight to 2.0 where a breaking
 change is almost expected :)

--
Ticket URL: <http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/252#comment:4>
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[PostGIS-4]

#252: Text autocasting behavior of geography is breaking geometry functionality
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
  Reporter:  robe     |       Owner:  pramsey      
      Type:  defect   |      Status:  new          
  Priority:  medium   |   Milestone:  postgis 1.5.0
 Component:  postgis  |     Version:  trunk        
Resolution:           |    Keywords:              
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Comment (by pramsey):

 I've got a whole wagon-load of breaking changes for 2.0, so for 1.5 we'll
 put in the casts and perhaps at 2.0 we remove them.

--
Ticket URL: <http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/252#comment:5>
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[PostGIS-4]

#252: Text autocasting behavior of geography is breaking geometry functionality
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
  Reporter:  robe     |       Owner:  pramsey      
      Type:  defect   |      Status:  new          
  Priority:  medium   |   Milestone:  postgis 1.5.0
 Component:  postgis  |     Version:  trunk        
Resolution:           |    Keywords:              
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Comment (by kneufeld):

 works fer me.

--
Ticket URL: <http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/252#comment:6>
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[PostGIS-4]

#252: Text autocasting behavior of geography is breaking geometry functionality
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
  Reporter:  robe     |       Owner:  pramsey      
      Type:  defect   |      Status:  new          
  Priority:  medium   |   Milestone:  postgis 1.5.0
 Component:  postgis  |     Version:  trunk        
Resolution:           |    Keywords:              
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Comment (by robe):

 So what are we doing now?  I was thinking 1.5 was just an interim to get a
 feel for this geography thing before we go full break in 2.0 and rip out
 all those deprecated functions etc.  So I didn't want to cause havoc in
 1.5 -- and still think we need the transition phase.

--
Ticket URL: <http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/252#comment:7>
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[PostGIS-4]

#252: Text autocasting behavior of geography is breaking geometry functionality
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
  Reporter:  robe     |       Owner:  pramsey      
      Type:  defect   |      Status:  new          
  Priority:  medium   |   Milestone:  postgis 1.5.0
 Component:  postgis  |     Version:  trunk        
Resolution:           |    Keywords:              
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Comment (by robe):

 hmm -- have we decided what course of action to take here.  Paul and Kevin
 gave confusing signals and Mark you have given no signal what so ever :).

--
Ticket URL: <http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/252#comment:8>
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[PostGIS-4]

#252: Text autocasting behavior of geography is breaking geometry functionality
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
  Reporter:  robe     |       Owner:  pramsey      
      Type:  defect   |      Status:  new          
  Priority:  medium   |   Milestone:  postgis 1.5.0
 Component:  postgis  |     Version:  trunk        
Resolution:           |    Keywords:              
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Comment (by kneufeld):

 Confusing signals?  I thought we were all on the same page.  Paul
 mentioned that he has many breaking changes that he'll introduce in 2.0.
 So to handle this issue and avoid a breaking change in 1.5, we'll add the
 overloaded functions that accept textual arguments (which still complies
 with the new release policy).  Then, when 2.0 rolls out, we can remove the
 unnecessary functions, enforcing explicit typecasting, following the lead
 of PostgreSQL.

 I was merely pointing out that we would need to overload every function
 that shares a common prototype as geometry, not just st_asbinary.

 So geography introduced at least one breaking change that looks like can
 be dealt with easy enough.

--
Ticket URL: <http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/252#comment:9>
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[PostGIS-4]

#252: Text autocasting behavior of geography is breaking geometry functionality
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
  Reporter:  robe     |       Owner:  pramsey      
      Type:  defect   |      Status:  new          
  Priority:  medium   |   Milestone:  postgis 1.5.0
 Component:  postgis  |     Version:  trunk        
Resolution:           |    Keywords:              
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Comment (by robe):

 That's what I thought you meant -- but got all confused when Paul started
 talking about adding Casts since these are function overloads and not
 casts.

 So to summarize -- we'll add overloads for

 ST_AsText, ST_AsBinary, ST_Intersects (when that is implemented), and
 ST_DWithin, ST_Distance also when that is implemented.  Are there any
 others I'm missing that share same names?

 I haven't checked out the operators && (I assume those are okay)

--
Ticket URL: <http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/252#comment:10>
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[PostGIS-4]

#252: Text autocasting behavior of geography is breaking geometry functionality
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
  Reporter:  robe     |       Owner:  pramsey      
      Type:  defect   |      Status:  new          
  Priority:  medium   |   Milestone:  postgis 1.5.0
 Component:  postgis  |     Version:  trunk        
Resolution:           |    Keywords:              
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Comment (by robe):

 Did this for ST_AsText and ST_AsBinary at r4540.  Still need to do this
 for
 ST_AsKML, ST_AsGML, ST_AsSVG

--
Ticket URL: <http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/252#comment:11>
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[PostGIS-4]

#252: Text autocasting behavior of geography is breaking geometry functionality
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
  Reporter:  robe     |       Owner:  pramsey      
      Type:  defect   |      Status:  closed      
  Priority:  medium   |   Milestone:  postgis 1.5.0
 Component:  postgis  |     Version:  trunk        
Resolution:  fixed    |    Keywords:              
----------------------+-----------------------------------------------------
Changes (by pramsey):

  * status:  new => closed
  * resolution:  => fixed

Comment:

 I've done this for all the signatures I think might realistically be
 exercised with a text input at r4762. Namely those sigs that have just a
 geometry for an argument, but not the multiple parameterized versions of
 AsGML, AsKML etc.

--
Ticket URL: <http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/252#comment:12>
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