Tom Lane wrote: > I do not think we want any client-side sorting in this feature at all, > because the minute you have any such thing, you are going to have an > absolutely never-ending stream of demands for more sorting features: > multi column, numeric vs text, ASC vs DESC, locale-aware, etc etc etc.
It doesn't really do any client-side sorting, the rest of the thread might refer to it like that by oversimplification, but if the command requests a header to be sorted, a "backdoor-style" query of this form is sent to the server, with PQexecParams(): SELECT n FROM (VALUES ($1,1),($2,2),($3,3)...) ) AS l(x,n) ORDER BY x [DESC] where the values to display in the header are bound to $1,$2,.. and the type associated with these parameters is the PQftype() of the field from which these values come. Then the <n> values coming back ordered by <x> tell us where to position the values corresponding to $1,$2... in the sorted header. There are some cases when this sort cannot work. For example if the field is an anonymous type or a ROW(). Or if the field is POINT(x,y), because our "point" type does not support order by. I believe these are corner cases for this feature. In these cases, psql just displays the error message that PQexecParams() emits. Best regards, -- Daniel Vérité PostgreSQL-powered mailer: http://www.manitou-mail.org Twitter: @DanielVerite -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
