Re: mixed, named notation support

Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 2:17 PM, Tom Lane<tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>> I think this patch is an exercise in
>> guessing at what the SQL committee will eventually do, and as such, we
>> should avoid like the plague making any guesses that carry significant
>> risk of being semantically incompatible with what they eventually do.
>> The risk/reward ratio isn't good enough.

> I completely agree; I would have chosen to boot the entire patch for
> exactly that reason.

Well, that's certainly still an available option. But people have been
asking for this type of feature for a long time. I think we should be
willing to include something along this line. What I don't want to do
is include something that might be semantically incompatible with the
eventual standard --- by which I mean accepting a call that the standard
also accepts, but specifies doing something different than what we do.
I'd prefer to omit inessential functionality rather than risk that.

It might be that the patch does, or can be made to, throw error in any
case that's even slightly questionable, while still allowing mixed cases
that seem certain to have only one possible interpretation. But I'm not
convinced that's where it's at today.

regards, tom lane