I have been thinking about the way we handle customizations in old code vs new code where new fields need to be added. Currently adding these for old code is pretty easy, but adding them for new code is a little more problematic. We have two options going forward:
1) We can move to Pg 9.1 as the required version and add a dependency on hstore. An hstore field can be attached to every major object type, retrieved and submitted with the stored procs, etc. We could actually also do the same in 8.4 using a text field to store JSON but the db would be unable to validate it.
2) We can move to Pg 9.2 as a required version and use JSON in the same way. We wouldn't need to depend, out of the box, on plv8js or any other extensions but customizations that might use this would be possible.
3) We could continue with 8.4 and store as XML. This would give us validation and xpath functions. There is more XML functionality in PostgreSQL (any version) than there is JSON functionality.
My preference currently is to move to JSON since it is a little easier to reliably convert to/from Perl data structures, and would be a little easier in other languages, probably, too. What does everyone else think?
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers