Re: extension for sql update

Tom Lane wrote:
> much anything that can generate a row. The patch as you have it
> provides nothing more than syntactic sugar for something people can do
> anyway. The reason people want this syntax is that they expect to be
> able to write, say,
>
> UPDATE mytab SET (foo, bar, baz) =
> (SELECT alpha, beta, gamma FROM othertab WHERE key = mytab.key);
>
> and with something like that you can't break apart the row-valued
> expression in the grammar. So in reality the feature has to propagate
> much further into the backend than this.

That UPDATE example is interesting because I remember when using
Informix that I had to do a separate SELECT statement for each UPDATE
column I wanted to update. I didn't realize that you could group
columns and assign them from a single select --- clearly that is a
powerful syntax we should support some day.

--
Bruce Momjian bruce(at)momjian(dot)us
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com

+ If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +