JOINing subselects in FROM?

From: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)atentus(dot)com>
To: PgSQL general <pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: JOINing subselects in FROM?
Date: 2002-04-10 05:27:17
Message-ID: 20020410012717.74771ff9.alvherre@atentus.com
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Hello:

I'm playing around with the syntax of the SELECT.

I have a very simple table (this is a silly example):

create table datos (año int, mes text, valor int);

with a couple tuples:

insert into datos (año, mes, valor) values (1999, 'enero', 100);
insert into datos (año, mes, valor) values (2000, 'enero', 200);
insert into datos (año, mes, valor) values (1999, 'febrero', 300);

I'm trying to JOIN two subselects-in-from clauses and can't get it
right:

SELECT foo1.mes, valor1999 AS "1999", valor2000 AS "2000" FROM
(SELECT valor AS valor1999, mes FROM datos WHERE año=1999) AS foo1
OUTER JOIN
(SELECT valor AS valor2000, mes FROM datos WHERE año=2000) AS foo2
ON foo1.mes=foo2.mes;
ERROR: parser: parse error at or near "OUTER"

If I try to do an INNER JOIN, I get instead
SELECT foo1.mes, valor1999 AS "1999", valor2000 AS "2000" FROM
(SELECT valor AS valor1999, mes FROM datos WHERE año=1999) AS foo1
INNER JOIN
(SELECT valor AS valor2000, mes FROM datos WHERE año=2000) AS foo2
ON foo1.mes=foo2.mes;
ERROR: flatten_join_alias_var: unexpected subtree type

But if I do it like
SELECT foo1.mes, valor1999 AS "1999", valor2000 AS "2000" FROM
(SELECT valor AS valor1999, mes FROM datos WHERE año=1999) AS foo1,
(SELECT valor AS valor2000, mes FROM datos WHERE año=2000) AS foo2
WHERE foo1.mes=foo2.mes;

it works (but I lose some tuples -- I expected to get NULL there in the
OUTER JOIN query).

Remember, this is a silly example, I'm not trying to use it for anything
but playing around with the syntax. But I wonder whether this is
supposed to work?

alvherre=> select version();
version
----------------------------------------------------------------
PostgreSQL 7.3devel on i686-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by GCC 2.96
(1 row)

On a related note, psql's "\h select" shows the syntax for select, but
it doesn't specify what are the terminal symbols for the join_type
non-terminal.

(this is a week-old or so CVS)

--
Alvaro Herrera (<alvherre[a]atentus.com>)
"Puedes vivir solo una vez, pero si lo haces bien, una vez es suficiente"

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