SQL-standard TABLE() is a subset of UNNEST(); they deal with arrays and
other collection types. This feature, however, deals with set-returning
functions. Use a different syntax for this feature to keep open the
possibility of implementing the standard TABLE().
This patch adds the ability to write TABLE( function1(), function2(), ...)
as a single FROM-clause entry. The result is the concatenation of the
first row from each function, followed by the second row from each
function, etc; with NULLs inserted if any function produces fewer rows than
others. This is believed to be a much more useful behavior than what
Postgres currently does with multiple SRFs in a SELECT list.
This syntax also provides a reasonable way to combine use of column
definition lists with WITH ORDINALITY: put the column definition list
inside TABLE(), where it's clear that it doesn't control the ordinality
column as well.
Also implement SQL-compliant multiple-argument UNNEST(), by turning
UNNEST(a,b,c) into TABLE(unnest(a), unnest(b), unnest(c)).
The SQL standard specifies TABLE() with only a single function, not
multiple functions, and it seems to require an implicit UNNEST() which is
not what this patch does. There may be something wrong with that reading
of the spec, though, because if it's right then the spec's TABLE() is just
a pointless alternative spelling of UNNEST(). After further review of
that, we might choose to adopt a different syntax for what this patch does,
but in any case this functionality seems clearly worthwhile.
Andrew Gierth, reviewed by Zoltán Böszörményi and Heikki Linnakangas, and
significantly revised by me
There's still a lot of room for improvement, but it basically works,
and we need this to be present before we can do anything much with the
writable-foreign-tables patch. So let's commit it and get on with testing.
Shigeru Hanada, reviewed by KaiGai Kohei and Tom Lane
The SQL standard does not have general functions-in-FROM, but it does
allow UNNEST() there (see the <collection derived table> production),
and the semantics of that are defined to include lateral references.
So spec compliance requires allowing lateral references within UNNEST()
even without an explicit LATERAL keyword. Rather than making UNNEST()
a special case, it seems best to extend this flexibility to any
function-in-FROM. We'll still allow LATERAL to be written explicitly
for clarity's sake, but it's now a noise word in this context.
In theory this change could result in a change in behavior of existing
queries, by allowing what had been an outer reference in a function-in-FROM
to be captured by an earlier FROM-item at the same level. However, all
pre-9.3 PG releases have a bug that causes them to match variable
references to earlier FROM-items in preference to outer references (and
then throw an error). So no previously-working query could contain the
type of ambiguity that would risk a change of behavior.
Per a suggestion from Andrew Gierth, though I didn't use his patch.
Somewhere along the line, somebody decided to remove all trace of this
notation from the documentation text. It was still in the command syntax
synopses, or at least some of them, but with no indication what it meant.
This will not do, as evidenced by the confusion apparent in bug #7543;
even if the notation is now unnecessary, people will find it in legacy
SQL code and need to know what it does.
This patch implements the standard syntax of LATERAL attached to a
sub-SELECT in FROM, and also allows LATERAL attached to a function in FROM,
since set-returning function calls are expected to be one of the principal
use-cases.
The main change here is a rewrite of the mechanism for keeping track of
which relations are visible for column references while the FROM clause is
being scanned. The parser "namespace" lists are no longer lists of bare
RTEs, but are lists of ParseNamespaceItem structs, which carry an RTE
pointer as well as some visibility-controlling flags. Aside from
supporting LATERAL correctly, this lets us get rid of the ancient hacks
that required rechecking subqueries and JOIN/ON and function-in-FROM
expressions for invalid references after they were initially parsed.
Invalid column references are now always correctly detected on sight.
In passing, remove assorted parser error checks that are now dead code by
virtue of our having gotten rid of add_missing_from, as well as some
comments that are obsolete for the same reason. (It was mainly
add_missing_from that caused so much fudging here in the first place.)
The planner support for this feature is very minimal, and will be improved
in future patches. It works well enough for testing purposes, though.
catversion bump forced due to new field in RangeTblEntry.
As noted by Thom Brown, this confuses the DocBook index processor; it
fails to merge entries that differ only in whitespace, and sorts them
unexpectedly as well. Seems like a toolchain bug, but I'm not going to
hold my breath waiting for a fix.
Note: easiest way to find these is to look for double spaces in HTML.index.
This is not the hoped-for facility of using INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE inside
a WITH, but rather the other way around. It seems useful in its own
right anyway.
Note: catversion bumped because, although the contents of stored rules
might look compatible, there's actually a subtle semantic change.
A single Query containing a WITH and INSERT...VALUES now represents
writing the WITH before the INSERT, not before the VALUES. While it's
not clear that that matters to anyone, it seems like a good idea to
have it cited in the git history for catversion.h.
Original patch by Marko Tiikkaja, with updating and cleanup by
Hitoshi Harada.
other columns to be referenced without listing them in GROUP BY, so long as
the primary key column(s) are listed in GROUP BY.
Eventually we should also allow functional dependency on a UNIQUE constraint
when the columns are marked NOT NULL, but that has to wait until NOT NULL
constraints are represented in pg_constraint, because we need to have
pg_constraint OIDs for all the conditions needed to ensure functional
dependency.
Peter Eisentraut, reviewed by Alex Hunsaker and Tom Lane
The endterm attribute is mainly useful when the toolchain does not support
automatic link target text generation for a particular situation. In the
past, this was required by the man page tools for all reference page links,
but that is no longer the case, and it now actually gets in the way of
proper automatic link text generation. The only remaining use cases are
currently xrefs to refsects.
Per recent discussion, add_missing_from has been deprecated for long enough to
consider removing, and it's getting in the way of planned parser refactoring.
The system now always behaves as though add_missing_from were OFF.
patch. This includes the ability to force the frame to cover the whole
partition, and the ability to make the frame end exactly on the current row
rather than its last ORDER BY peer. Supporting any more of the full SQL
frame-clause syntax will require nontrivial hacking on the window aggregate
code, so it'll have to wait for 8.5 or beyond.
depth-first search order. Upon close reading of SQL:2008, it seems that the
spec's SEARCH DEPTH FIRST and SEARCH BREADTH FIRST options do not actually
guarantee any particular result order: what they do is provide a constructed
column that the user can then sort on in the outer query. So this is actually
just as much functionality ...
pseudo-type record[] to represent arrays of possibly-anonymous composite
types. Since composite datums carry their own type identification, no
extra knowledge is needed at the array level.
The main reason for doing this right now is that it is necessary to support
the general case of detection of cycles in recursive queries: if you need to
compare more than one column to detect a cycle, you need to compare a ROW()
to an array built from ROW()s, at least if you want to do it as the spec
suggests. Add some documentation and regression tests concerning the cycle
detection issue.
implementation uses an in-memory hash table, so it will poop out for very
large recursive results ... but the performance characteristics of a
sort-based implementation would be pretty unpleasant too.
There are some unimplemented aspects: recursive queries must use UNION ALL
(should allow UNION too), and we don't have SEARCH or CYCLE clauses.
These might or might not get done for 8.4, but even without them it's a
pretty useful feature.
There are also a couple of small loose ends and definitional quibbles,
which I'll send a memo about to pgsql-hackers shortly. But let's land
the patch now so we can get on with other development.
Yoshiyuki Asaba, with lots of help from Tatsuo Ishii and Tom Lane
(or RETURNING), but only when the output name is not any SQL keyword.
This seems as close as we can get to the standard's syntax without a
great deal of thrashing. Original patch by Hiroshi Saito, amended by me.
Standard English uses "may", "can", and "might" in different ways:
may - permission, "You may borrow my rake."
can - ability, "I can lift that log."
might - possibility, "It might rain today."
Unfortunately, in conversational English, their use is often mixed, as
in, "You may use this variable to do X", when in fact, "can" is a better
choice. Similarly, "It may crash" is better stated, "It might crash".
Standard English uses "may", "can", and "might" in different ways:
may - permission, "You may borrow my rake."
can - ability, "I can lift that log."
might - possibility, "It might rain today."
Unfortunately, in conversational English, their use is often mixed, as
in, "You may use this variable to do X", when in fact, "can" is a better
choice. Similarly, "It may crash" is better stated, "It might crash".
Also update two error messages mentioned in the documenation to match.
per-column options for btree indexes. The planner's support for this is still
pretty rudimentary; it does not yet know how to plan mergejoins with
nondefault ordering options. The documentation is pretty rudimentary, too.
I'll work on improving that stuff later.
Note incompatible change from prior behavior: ORDER BY ... USING will now be
rejected if the operator is not a less-than or greater-than member of some
btree opclass. This prevents less-than-sane behavior if an operator that
doesn't actually define a proper sort ordering is selected.
Noah Misch
Tom Lane
Peter Eisentraut
Bruce Momjian
Robert Haas
Magnus Hagander
Neil Conway
PostgreSQL Daemon