Re: string_agg delimiter having no effect with order by

2010/8/4 Kevin Grittner <Kevin(dot)Grittner(at)wicourts(dot)gov>:
> Alex Hunsaker <badalex(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 11:04, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>>> If we were a bit earlier in the 9.0 cycle I would suggest that
>>> this confusion is a sufficient reason to drop the one-argument
>>> form of string_agg.  It's too late now though.
>>

The same problem can be with custom aggregates :( so this syntax isn't
too robust. We can support Oracle's syntax in future releases, where
syntax divide aggregate call and ORDER BY clause.

>> FWIW I think we can still change it.   Isn't this type of issue
>> part of what beta is for?  If we were in RC that would be a
>> different story
>
> I like to think I'm pretty serious about controlling scope creep to
> prevent a release dragging out, but this one seems like beta testing
> uncovered a flaw in new code for the release.  In my book, that
> makes it fair game to balance the risk of breaking things by
> changing it now against the problems we'll have long term if we
> leave it alone.  I'm not sure if that was the basis of saying it was
> too late, or some other consideration.

It is just removing some from one perspective problematic code. This
doesn't add any feature - so it cannot be a precedents.

we can look on this situation from two views:

a) it is good, because we can document this feature/behave - without
one param aggregates people will repeat same situation with custom
aggregates- and this will not be documented.

b) it is bad, because lot of users will be confused.

I prefer @a

Regards

Pavel

>
> -Kevin
>
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