Re: [PATCH] random_normal function

Bonjour Michaël,

>> Overall, I think that there should be a clearer discussion and plan about
>> which random functionS postgres should provide to complement the standard
>> instead of going there… randomly:-)
>
> So, what does the specification tells about seeds, normal and random
> functions? A bunch of DBMSs implement RAND, sometimes RANDOM, SEED or
> even NORMAL using from time to time specific SQL keywords to do the
> work.

I do not have the SQL standard, so I have no idea about what is in there.

From a typical use case point of view, I'd say uniform, normal and
exponential would make sense for floats. I'm also okay with generating a
uniform bytes pseudo-randomly.

I'd be more at ease to add simple functions rather than a special
heavy-on-keywords syntax, even if standard.

> Note that SQLValueFunction made the addition of more returning data
> types a bit more complicated (not much, still) than the new
> COERCE_SQL_SYNTAX by going through a mapping function, so the
> keyword/function mapping is straight-forward.

I'm unclear about why this paragraph is here.

--
Fabien.