On 24 Sep 2010, at 21:20, Bartłomiej Korupczyński wrote:

> Hi guys,
> 
> I've found some posts from 2007 about UPDATE/DELETE ... LIMIT N syntax
> and I'd like to raise it again. Current PostgreSQL of UPDATE/DELETE
> implement RETURNING statement, so extending by ORDER and LIMIT would be
> really useful.

> All that with just one query. In this specific example, the ORDER BY
> statement could be even omitted if we don't care how slots are
> distributed between users.


This probably came up in the discussion from back then as well, but what stops 
you from using a sub-select?

UPDATE slots
  FROM (SELECT id FROM slots WHERE user IS NULL
        ORDER BY id LIMIT 1) AS available
   SET user='joe'
 WHERE id = available.id
 RETURNING *;

Admittedly that's longer and would be slightly less efficient, but it is 
available now (and has been for a while) and it's still in one query.

Also:
> CREATE TABLE slots (
>       id INTEGER UNIQUE NOT NULL,
>       user VARCHAR(32),
>       expires TIMESTAMP WITH TIMEZONE,
>       -- some other columns
> );


I'd declare a primary key as what it is, not as some generic UNIQUE NOT NULL 
column ;) It won't make much difference in practice, but for example, that way 
it's intended use is immediately clear from the table definition if people look 
it up.

Alban Hertroys

--
If you can't see the forest for the trees,
cut the trees and you'll see there is no forest.


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