Re: SELECT INTO deprecation

On Wed, Dec 9, 2020 at 09:48:54PM +0100, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> On 2020-12-03 20:26, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> > On 2020-12-03 16:34, Tom Lane wrote:
> > > As I recall, a whole lot of the pain we have with INTO has to do
> > > with the semantics we've chosen for INTO in a set-operation nest.
> > > We think you can write something like
> > >
> > > SELECT ... INTO foo FROM ... UNION SELECT ... FROM ...
> > >
> > > but we insist on the INTO being in the first component SELECT.
> > > I'd like to know exactly how much of that messiness is shared
> > > by SQL Server.
> >
> > On sqlfiddle.com, this works:
> >
> > select a into t3 from t1 union select a from t2;
> >
> > but this gets an error:
> >
> > select a from t1 union select a into t4 from t2;
> >
> > SELECT INTO must be the first query in a statement containing a UNION,
> > INTERSECT or EXCEPT operator.
>
> So, with that in mind, here is an alternative proposal that points out that
> SELECT INTO has some use for compatibility.

Do we really want to carry around confusing syntax for compatibility? I
doubt we would ever add INTO now, even for compatibility.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> https://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB https://enterprisedb.com

The usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness, Bruce Lee