Playing with fresh PostgreSQL 9.2beta2 I cannot find spclocation column of a system catalog pg_tablespace. First my thought was that I’m too tired. But then I found mentioning about this at pgsql-hackers by Magnus Hagander:
And IIRC, we don’t actually *use* spclocation anywhere. How about we
just get rid of them as independents?
Oh, really?!!! WTF? How about other developers, ha? I’m using this. I really do. Don’t know how about other guys, but I will need additional nasty checks for server version to know what should I use: pg_get_tablespace_location(oid) or tablespace.spclocation
Thanks a lot guys! Way to go!
Pasha Golub's Blog 
The catalog structure was never promised to be stable, so if you’re relying on them you need to test with each major version and be prepared for breakage. And the release notes mention that pg_tablespace.spclocation is gone.
Maybe you could create a function my_tablespace_location that either looks at pg_tablespace.spclocation or dispatches to pg_tablespace_location() and this way have a backwards compatibility layer in your code?
LikeLike
Out of curiosity – what are you using this for?
LikeLike
Reverse Engineering in MicroOLAP Database Designer for PostgreSQL.
LikeLike
Well, it’s not just you. Both pgAdmin and phpPgAdmin show the location for tablespaces too.
LikeLike
Sure! I completely forgot.
LikeLike
9.2 is still in beta. File a bug.
LikeLike
Even if this issue already added to the release notes?
LikeLike
Yes. Often when we remove stuff like this it’s based on the idea that nobody is using it for anything important. If people report application breakage, then often incompatible changes are phased in over more than one release, i.e. marked obsolete for 2 releases, then removed.
This is also evidence that we need a set of stable, comprehensive system views separate from the system tables, which is a long-term windmill I’ve been tilting at since 8.4. So I’d love to see you file a bug for that reason too.
LikeLike
Seems no one commented about _why_ it was removed. We already had a symbolic link that points to the tablespace location, and the removal of this column makes it possible to cleanly change the location of those symlinks while the server is down, with no other adjustments required.
This is all mentioned in the release note item, which somehow was not read in this case. The Postgres developers are not as inept as this blog post suggests.
LikeLike
Bruce who said “inept”? š At least you can leave this column with a NULL value for all tablespaces.
LikeLike