[SQL] Get name of columns in a table

2001-07-28 Thread María Elena Hernández



 Hi 
everybody!  Is it possible to get thecoluns names of an a 
table in the database with a sqlquery?? Thanks, a lot.
e-mail[EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED]


[SQL] Re: Get name of columns in a table

2001-07-28 Thread Joel Burton

On Fri, 27 Jul 2001, [iso-8859-1] María Elena Hernández wrote:

>  Is it possible to get thecoluns names of an a table in the database with a sql
> query??

"psql -E" will show the SQL commands that psql internally uses to display
tables, database, etc. Once in psql, use "\d table_name" to see fields in
a table and the SQL behind that.

-- 
Joel Burton   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Director of Information Systems, Support Center of Washington


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[SQL] Who do I make _ not a wildcard?

2001-07-28 Thread Roy Souther

In PG the _ is a wildcard that means any singal char. I need to do a search 
for the actual _ char and not get back thousands of wrong matches. Is there 
and escape char that I could use? This needs to work with PG 7.0.3 & 7.1.2.

TIA
-- 
Roy Souther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

01100010 10101110 11000110 11010110 0100 10110010 10010110 11000110 
01001110 0110 11001110 00010110 10010110 00101110 1100 1100 


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Re: [SQL] Who do I make _ not a wildcard?

2001-07-28 Thread Stephan Szabo

On Sat, 28 Jul 2001, Roy Souther wrote:

> In PG the _ is a wildcard that means any singal char. I need to do a search 
> for the actual _ char and not get back thousands of wrong matches. Is there 
> and escape char that I could use? This needs to work with PG 7.0.3 & 7.1.2.

\\_ should work for a literal escape.
At least on current sources you can do something like:
 like 'blah!_%' escape '!'
where ! becomes the escape character for the string.



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Re: [SQL] nullif BUG???

2001-07-28 Thread Tom Lane

"Josh Berkus" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Er... what were you expecting, exactly?

AFAICT, the quoted behavior is correct per the defined behavior of
nullif(), cf 
http://www.ca.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/7.1/postgres/functions-conditional.html

NULLIF(value1, value2)

The NULLIF function returns NULL if and only if value1 and
value2 are equal. Otherwise it returns value1.

> Except for IS NULL (and COALESCE, which uses IS NULL) any operation
> involving a NULL is also NULL.

Well, that's not quite the correct reasoning.

NULLIF and COALESCE are both shorthands for CASE expressions, and hence
are capable of returning non-NULL for a NULL input.  It all depends on
how the CASE tests are phrased.  NULLIF is essentially
CASE WHEN value1 = value2 THEN NULL ELSE value1 END
In the quoted example, "NULL = 5" will yield NULL, which is interpreted
as a FALSE case test, so you get the ELSE case, ie value1, ie NULL.

regards, tom lane

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[SQL] Re: performance issue with distance function

2001-07-28 Thread Mark kirkwood

Hi Ryan,

There is a bit of a strange way around the distance overhead issue :

Create another table with structure like 
(lat1,long1,zip1,lat2,long2,zip2,distance)

and precalculate the distance for each possibility. This means n*(n-1) rows 
if you have n location rows. You would then include this table in your query 
and use distance like you wanted to initially ( should work fast provided you 
index it on lat1,long1,distance)

The calculation overhead of distance is then removed from your query ( at the 
expense of some disk space ). The insert of each new location requires n 
calculations of distance - you could perform this in the background I guess !

regards

Mark


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