Re: non-recursive WITH clause support

On Mon, Apr 09, 2007 at 06:43:08PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Gregory Stark <stark(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> writes:
> > Here's an updated patch that fixes the bug I had. This is now functional basic
> > non-recursive WITH clause support.
> > http://community.enterprisedb.com/recursive/with-pg82stable-v2.patch.gz
> > It's a pretty short simple patch as is; it just directly inlines any WITH
> > clauses as if they had been written as subqueries.
>
> So this does not really add any new functionality, it's just variant
> syntax for something you can do about as easily without it, right?

Not totally as easily. For example, you can do some kinds of
aggregation with a few fewer keystrokes.

> The downside that I see is is that it changes WITH and SET into fully
> reserved words, which no doubt will break a few people's applications.

Really?

> While we're probably going to have to do that eventually, I'd like
> to be able to point to some non-negligible benefit resulting from
> the change when we do it.
>
> So my inclination is to not apply this in its current form, but to
> wait for the full recursive-WITH feature before taking the
> compatibility hit.

Is there some way to poll people for uses of WITH and SET in places
they shouldn't be?

Cheers,
D
--
David Fetter <david(at)fetter(dot)org> http://fetter.org/
phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666
Skype: davidfetter

Remember to vote!
Consider donating to PostgreSQL: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate