Richard,
> I've been happily using statements like
> UPDATE a SET flag=1 FROM b WHERE a.id=b.id AND b.foo='x';
>
> While PG's FROM extension makes life simple, I can't believe there's
> not a way
> to do an update on a join using standard SQL. The two options I can
> think of
I don't understand why you're worried about this. The lack of UPDATE
.. FROM is widely regarded as an omission by the ANSI committee, and
most SQL RDBMS support it, including MS SQL Server and Oracle. I'm not
sure about MySQL, but MySQL doesn't support sub-selects either.
Is there a database you're tinking of that sticks to the strict SQL92
definitions? OpenBase, maybe?
-Josh Berkus