Re: Rethinking representation of partial-aggregate steps

David Rowley <david(dot)rowley(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
> On 27 June 2016 at 03:36, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>> Looking at this in the light of morning, I'm rather strongly tempted to
>> invert the sense of the FINALIZE option, so that "simple" mode works out
>> as zero, ie, select no options. Maybe call it SKIPFINAL instead of
>> FINALIZE?

> Aggref calls this aggpartial, and I was tempted to invert that many
> times and make it aggfinalize, but in the end didn't.
> It seems nicer to me to keep it as a list of things that are done,
> rather than to make one exception to that just so we can have the
> simple mode as 0.

[ shrug... ] I do not buy that argument, because it doesn't justify
the COMBINE option: why shouldn't that be inverted, ie USEFINALFUNC?
The only way to decide that except by fiat is to say that we're
enumerating the non-default or non-simple-mode behaviors.

regards, tom lane