The new format accepts exactly the same data as the json type. However, it is
stored in a format that does not require reparsing the orgiginal text in order
to process it, making it much more suitable for indexing and other operations.
Insignificant whitespace is discarded, and the order of object keys is not
preserved. Neither are duplicate object keys kept - the later value for a given
key is the only one stored.
The new type has all the functions and operators that the json type has,
with the exception of the json generation functions (to_json, json_agg etc.)
and with identical semantics. In addition, there are operator classes for
hash and btree indexing, and two classes for GIN indexing, that have no
equivalent in the json type.
This feature grew out of previous work by Oleg Bartunov and Teodor Sigaev, which
was intended to provide similar facilities to a nested hstore type, but which
in the end proved to have some significant compatibility issues.
Authors: Oleg Bartunov, Teodor Sigaev, Peter Geoghegan and Andrew Dunstan.
Review: Andres Freund
This should have been done when the json functionality was added to
hstore in 9.3.0. To handle this correctly, the upgrade script therefore
uses conditional logic by using plpgsql in a DO statement to add the two
new functions and the new cast. If hstore_to_json_loose is detected as
already present and dependent on the hstore extension nothing is done.
This will require that the database be loaded with plpgsql.
People who have installed the earlier and spurious 1.1 version of hstore
will need to do:
ALTER EXTENSION hstore UPDATE;
to pick up the new functions properly.
Since PostgreSQL 9.0, we've emitted a warning message when an operator
named => is created, because the SQL standard now reserves that token
for another use. But we've also shipped such an operator with hstore.
Use of the function hstore(text, text) has been recommended in
preference to =>(text, text). Per discussion, it's now time to take
the next step and stop shipping the operator. This will allow us to
prohibit the use of => as an operator name in a future release if and
when we wish to support the SQL standard use of this token.
The release notes should mention this incompatibility.
Patch by me, reviewed by David Wheeler, Dimitri Fontaine and Tom Lane.
This isn't fully tested as yet, in particular I'm not sure that the
"foo--unpackaged--1.0.sql" scripts are OK. But it's time to get some
buildfarm cycles on it.
sepgsql is not converted to an extension, mainly because it seems to
require a very nonstandard installation process.
Dimitri Fontaine and Tom Lane
