Bruce Momjian wrote:
> 
> Tom Lane wrote:
> > "Greg Sabino Mullane" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > >> It's the single most useful non-standard SQL feature postgresql has. It
> > >> is thus simultaneously bad (from a portatbility aspect) and brilliant
> > >> (because it's a million times easier and faster than the alternatives).
> > 
> > > You mean second-most useful. LIMIT/OFFSET is the champion, hand down. :)
> > 
> > Yeah, but that one's only quasi-non-standard ... several other DBMSes
> > have it too.
> 
> I know MySQL has it, and SQL Lite added it.  Which other ones?  Someone
> asked me recently.  I see this chart from Perl documentation:
> 
>       > 
> http://search.cpan.org/~davebaird/SQL-Abstract-Limit-0.12/lib/SQL/Abstract/Limit.pm#DESCRIPTION
> 
> Oh, and Rasmus Lerdorf told me he invented LIMIT for mSQL, and MySQL
> then added it, and that MySQL added the limit option.
> 
> This was interesting in the MySQL manuals:
> 
>       For compatibility with PostgreSQL, MySQL also supports the LIMIT
>       row_count OFFSET offset syntax.
> 
> Did we add the OFFSET _keyword_.  I remember we had the comma-ed numbers
> backwards, and we had OFFSET, but I thought that keyword came from
> MySQL.  Obviously, they don't think so.

Informix provides the "FIRST" syntax to get the leading rows of a set; I think 
you have to use cursors to get further offsets though (been a while since I 
have had to use it), e.g. "SELECT FIRST 10 col1, col2, col3 FROM foo WHERE 
...". No "LAST" either (just tried).

They have had this since at least IDS 8 and I thing the 7.x series had it as 
well. No idea where they got it from; I learned on Informix so I actually 
thought it was standard, until reality disabused me of the notion.

Greg Williamson
DBA
GlobeXplorer LLC


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