Re: [HACKERS] column aliases

At 12:00 PM 1/24/00 +0100, Zeugswetter Andreas SB wrote:

>IMHO, if there exists a from clause, we could insist,
>that all tables are listed (no implicitly added table),
>since it is really too error prone.
>
>What I would not like to see removed is the ability to
>avoid the from clause alltogether. Like in:
>
>select xor.eval;

Yeah...in porting the arsDigita Community System over from
Oracle, we created a dummy table called "dual" because of
the clunky Oracle-ism involving that table.

In other words, in Oracle you can't say:

select sydate();

because you must have a "from" clause. By convention you
use a dummy built-in table called "dual" which has one row:

select sysdate() from dual;

Ugh. I agree that being able to exclude the from clause
altogether is nice.

- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza(at)pacifier(dot)com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, Pacific Northwest
Rare Bird Alert Service and other goodies at
http://donb.photo.net.