On Thursday 23 August 2007 09:55, Alvaro Herrera wrote: > > I think the compromise is to instead of generating aliases at all just > > use an alias like "*Anonymous Subquery*" and add a boolean flag > > indicating that that range table is anonymous and not a valid target for > > references. I started doing that a while back but got distracted (and > > discouraged since it seemed not to have widespread support). > > Hey, you are describing an implementation of my suggestion.
I just don't really see the gain in doing this. Any violations of the SQL standard are bad things in and of themselves; they encourage people to write non-spec applications which are then hard to port/support alongside other databases. It's also bad PR for us. So if we're going to support a non-spec feature (gods know we have) then it's going to be because it offers *significant* extra functionality. SELECT DISTINCT ON (), LIMIT/OFFSET, custom data types, CREATE OPERATOR, RULES, etc. all give us stuff that would be *very* hard to do -- or even impossible -- without these features. I just don't see the ability to omit the alias in a query with only one subquery (the only circumstances under which it would be safe to do so) as any significant gain in fuctionality. -- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL @ Sun San Francisco ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 7: You can help support the PostgreSQL project by donating at http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate