I am running PostgreSQL 6.5.3 on i686-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by gcc egcs-2.91.66. I have currently a table like the following: TABA: a|start|finish -+-----+------ R| 4| 8 S| 6| 10 I want the output a table with start incremented by 1, and fininsh as the maximum of fininish in all records. Quite sensibliy, my attemp to use a SQL statement like 'SELECT a,start+1,max(finish) from taba' failed with "ERROR: Illegal use of aggregates or non-group column in target list". Hence, I tried to create a function that would return the maximum fininsh attribute in a table. Hence, CREATE function findMax() RETURNS int4 AS 'SELECT max(finish) from taba;' LANGUAGE 'sql' and then SELECT a, start+1,findMax() from taba; does work, but the problem is, I need a generic function that would find the maximum finish attribute not just for a unique table. Hence I tried the following: CREATE function findMax(varchar) RETURNS int4 AS 'SELECT max(finish) from $1;' LANGUAGE 'sql' However, this results in "ERROR: parser: parse error at or near "$1""; I have tried to substitute varchar with TEXT and NAME, but still the same error persists. Changing $1 to \$1 does not help either. I have even tried alias using: CREATE FUNCTION findMax(varchar) RETURNS int4 AS 'DECLARE tabName ALIAS FOR $1; BEGIN SELECT max(finish) from tabName; END; ' LANGUAGE 'sql'; this results in "ERROR: parser: parse error at or near "alias"" Does anyone know how I could take in a table name as argument to a SQL function? ---------------------------------------------------------------- Get your free email from AltaVista at http://altavista.iname.com
