I agree that this feature would be quite useful and should be included in SQL.
The exact syntax is less of an issue, but just the ability to cleanly say
"select all columns except for these". I have in fact argued for the same
feature in the past.
If you want to and can implement this feature then more power to you. I'll look
forward to it being in Pg 9.2.
I think then the only discussion point should be what (terse) syntax to use for
it, not whether the feature should exist at all.
Arguing against this feature is like arguing against supporting "where not()" or
"except" or "not in". One should be able to do complements not only of rows but
of columns too. Basic good language design.
-- Darren Duncan
Eric Ridge wrote:
Would y'all accept a patch that extended the "SELECT *" syntax to let
you list fields to exclude from the A_Star?
Quite regularly I'll be testing queries via psql and want to see all
the columns from a fairly wide table except maybe a giant text or xml
column. A syntax like:
SELECT * EXCLUDING (big_col1, big_col2) FROM foo;
would be pretty handy. It would definitely save some typing in
certain cases. It seems like such a syntax would better document the
intent of a query too, rather than leaving one wondering if "big_col1"
was supposed to be omitted from the target list or not.
Anyways, I just wanted to run the idea by youse guys before I put too
much more effort into it. I've already made what appear to be the
minimum necessary changes to gram.y, and a few quick greps through the
code make me think the rest will be pretty easy.
Maybe the SQL spec says something about this and nobody's done the work yet?
Thanks for your input!
eric
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