Add a section to xaggr.sgml, as we have done in the past for other
extensions to the aggregation functionality. Assorted wordsmithing
and other minor improvements.
David Rowley and Tom Lane
These cases formerly failed with errors about "could not find array type
for data type". Now they yield arrays of the same element type and one
higher dimension.
The implementation involves creating functions with API similar to the
existing accumArrayResult() family. I (tgl) also extended the base family
by adding an initArrayResult() function, which allows callers to avoid
special-casing the zero-inputs case if they just want an empty array as
result. (Not all do, so the previous calling convention remains valid.)
This allowed simplifying some existing code in xml.c and plperl.c.
Ali Akbar, reviewed by Pavel Stehule, significantly modified by me
Before 9.4, such an aggregate couldn't be declared, because its final
function would have to have polymorphic result type but no polymorphic
argument, which CREATE FUNCTION would quite properly reject. The
ordered-set-aggregate patch found a workaround: allow the final function
to be declared as accepting additional dummy arguments that have types
matching the aggregate's regular input arguments. However, we failed
to notice that this problem applies just as much to regular aggregates,
despite the fact that we had a built-in regular aggregate array_agg()
that was known to be undeclarable in SQL because its final function
had an illegal signature. So what we should have done, and what this
patch does, is to decouple the extra-dummy-arguments behavior from
ordered-set aggregates and make it generally available for all aggregate
declarations. We have to put this into 9.4 rather than waiting till
later because it slightly alters the rules for declaring ordered-set
aggregates.
The patch turned out a bit bigger than I'd hoped because it proved
necessary to record the extra-arguments option in a new pg_aggregate
column. I'd thought we could just look at the final function's pronargs
at runtime, but that didn't work well for variadic final functions.
It's probably just as well though, because it simplifies life for pg_dump
to record the option explicitly.
While at it, fix array_agg() to have a valid final-function signature,
and add an opr_sanity test to notice future deviations from polymorphic
consistency. I also marked the percentile_cont() aggregates as not
needing extra arguments, since they don't.
Until now, when executing an aggregate function as a window function
within a window with moving frame start (that is, any frame start mode
except UNBOUNDED PRECEDING), we had to recalculate the aggregate from
scratch each time the frame head moved. This patch allows an aggregate
definition to include an alternate "moving aggregate" implementation
that includes an inverse transition function for removing rows from
the aggregate's running state. As long as this can be done successfully,
runtime is proportional to the total number of input rows, rather than
to the number of input rows times the average frame length.
This commit includes the core infrastructure, documentation, and regression
tests using user-defined aggregates. Follow-on commits will update some
of the built-in aggregates to use this feature.
David Rowley and Florian Pflug, reviewed by Dean Rasheed; additional
hacking by me
This patch introduces generic support for ordered-set and hypothetical-set
aggregate functions, as well as implementations of the instances defined in
SQL:2008 (percentile_cont(), percentile_disc(), rank(), dense_rank(),
percent_rank(), cume_dist()). We also added mode() though it is not in the
spec, as well as versions of percentile_cont() and percentile_disc() that
can compute multiple percentile values in one pass over the data.
Unlike the original submission, this patch puts full control of the sorting
process in the hands of the aggregate's support functions. To allow the
support functions to find out how they're supposed to sort, a new API
function AggGetAggref() is added to nodeAgg.c. This allows retrieval of
the aggregate call's Aggref node, which may have other uses beyond the
immediate need. There is also support for ordered-set aggregates to
install cleanup callback functions, so that they can be sure that
infrastructure such as tuplesort objects gets cleaned up.
In passing, make some fixes in the recently-added support for variadic
aggregates, and make some editorial adjustments in the recent FILTER
additions for aggregates. Also, simplify use of IsBinaryCoercible() by
allowing it to succeed whenever the target type is ANY or ANYELEMENT.
It was inconsistent that it dealt with other polymorphic target types
but not these.
Atri Sharma and Andrew Gierth; reviewed by Pavel Stehule and Vik Fearing,
and rather heavily editorialized upon by Tom Lane
There's no inherent reason why an aggregate function can't be variadic
(even VARIADIC ANY) if its transition function can handle the case.
Indeed, this patch to add the feature touches none of the planner or
executor, and little of the parser; the main missing stuff was DDL and
pg_dump support.
It is true that variadic aggregates can create the same sort of ambiguity
about parameters versus ORDER BY keys that was complained of when we
(briefly) had both one- and two-argument forms of string_agg(). However,
the policy formed in response to that discussion only said that we'd not
create any built-in aggregates with varying numbers of arguments, not that
we shouldn't allow users to do it. So the logical extension of that is
we can allow users to make variadic aggregates as long as we're wary about
shipping any such in core.
In passing, this patch allows aggregate function arguments to be named, to
the extent of remembering the names in pg_proc and dumping them in pg_dump.
You can't yet call an aggregate using named-parameter notation. That seems
like a likely future extension, but it'll take some work, and it's not what
this patch is really about. Likewise, there's still some work needed to
make window functions handle VARIADIC fully, but I left that for another
day.
initdb forced because of new aggvariadic field in Aggref parse nodes.
Instead, add a function pg_tablespace_location(oid) used to return
the same information, and do this by reading the symbolic link.
Doing it this way makes it possible to relocate a tablespace when the
database is down by simply changing the symbolic link.
On closer inspection, that two-element initcond value seems to have been
a little white lie to avoid explaining the full behavior of float8_accum.
But if people are going to expect the examples to be exactly correct,
I suppose we'd better explain. Per comment from Thom Brown.
Block elements with verbatim formatting (literallayout, programlisting,
screen, synopsis) should be aligned at column 0 independent of the surrounding
SGML, because whitespace is significant, and indenting them creates erratic
whitespace in the output. The CSS stylesheets already take care of indenting
the output.
Assorted markup improvements to go along with it.
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.
being called as aggregates, and to get the aggregate transition state memory
context if needed. Use it instead of poking directly into AggState and
WindowAggState in places that shouldn't know so much.
We should have done this in 8.4, probably, but better late than never.
Revised version of a patch by Hitoshi Harada.
ArrayBuildState, per trouble report from Merlin Moncure. By adopting
this fix, we are essentially deciding that aggregate final-functions
should not modify their inputs ever. Adjust documentation and comments
to match that conclusion.
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.
the opportunity to treat COUNT(*) as a zero-argument aggregate instead
of the old hack that equated it to COUNT(1); this is materially cleaner
(no more weird ANYOID cases) and ought to be at least a tiny bit faster.
Original patch by Sergey Koposov; review, documentation, simple regression
tests, pg_dump and psql support by moi.
CREATE AGGREGATE aggname (input_type) (parameter_list)
along with the old syntax where the input type was named in the parameter
list. This fits more naturally with the way that the aggregate is identified
in DROP AGGREGATE and other utility commands; furthermore it has a natural
extension to handle multiple-input aggregates, where the basetype-parameter
method would get ugly. In fact, this commit fixes the grammar and all the
utility commands to support multiple-input aggregates; but DefineAggregate
rejects it because the executor isn't fixed yet.
I didn't do anything about treating agg(*) as a zero-input aggregate instead
of artificially making it a one-input aggregate, but that should be considered
in combination with supporting multi-input aggregates.
can tell whether it is being used as an aggregate or not. This allows
such a function to avoid re-pallocing a pass-by-reference transition
value; normally it would be unsafe for a function to scribble on an input,
but in the aggregate case it's safe to reuse the old transition value.
Make int8inc() do this. This gets a useful improvement in the speed of
COUNT(*), at least on narrow tables (it seems to be swamped by I/O when
the table rows are wide). Per a discussion in early December with
Neil Conway. I also fixed int_aggregate.c to check this, thereby
turning it into something approaching a supportable technique instead
of being a crude hack.
chapters on extending types, operators, and aggregates into the extending
functions chapter. Move the information on how to call table functions
into the queries chapter. Remove some outdated information that is
already present in a better form in other parts of the documentation.
including:
- replacing all the appropriate usages of <citetitle>PostgreSQL
...</citetitle> with &cite-user;, &cite-admin;, and so on
- fix an omission in the EXECUTE documentation
- add some more text to the EXPLAIN documentation
- improve the PL/PgSQL RETURN NEXT documentation (more work to do here)
- minor markup fixes
Neil Conway
There's now only one transition value and transition function.
NULL handling in aggregates is a lot cleaner. Also, use Numeric
accumulators instead of integer accumulators for sum/avg on integer
datatypes --- this avoids overflow at the cost of being a little slower.
Implement VARIANCE() and STDDEV() aggregates in the standard backend.
Also, enable new LIKE selectivity estimators by default. Unrelated
change, but as long as I had to force initdb anyway...
Tom Lane
Peter Eisentraut
Magnus Hagander
Bruce Momjian
Neil Conway
PostgreSQL Daemon
Thomas G. Lockhart