I wrote:
> The only other thing that's been discussed is the SQL2003 syntax
> NEXT VALUE FOR sequencename
> but this is in fact just syntactic sugar for something functionally
> equivalent to nextval('sequencename'::regclass).
I have to take that back. It's not just syntactic sugar for nextval(),
because the SQL2003 spec says
: If there are multiple instances of <next value expression>s specifying
: the same sequence generator within a single SQL-statement, all those
: instances return the same value for a given row processed by that
: SQL-statement.
So it's really sort of a magic combination of nextval() and currval().
To meet the spec semantics, we'd need some sort of layer over nextval()
that would keep track of whether a new value should be obtained or not.
I don't think we should use the spec syntax until we're prepared to
meet the spec semantics, so NEXT VALUE FOR as part of the current patch
seems "out".
A relatively simple Plan B would be to use different SQL names for the
variant functions, ie, keep nextval() as is and instead invent, say,
next_value(regclass). Then we tell people to use next_value('foo')
and they don't need to write the cast explicitly. This seems
notationally nicer but a major pain in the neck from the point of view
of documentation and explanation --- for instance, instead of saying
"nextval does this" we'd have to say "next_value and nextval do this".
Not at all sure that I like it better.
regards, tom lane
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