Re: ORDER BY ALL

On Tue, Mar 24, 2026 at 1:32 PM Kirill Reshke <reshkekirill(at)gmail(dot)com>
wrote:

> On Tue, 24 Mar 2026 at 11:27, Rushabh Lathia <rushabh(dot)lathia(at)gmail(dot)com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Hi hackers,
> >
> > Please find the attached patch, to implement the ORDER BY ALL clause.
> > Commit ef38a4d97, implemented GROUP BY ALL clause, and this
> > feature follows the same pattern.
> >
> > ORDER BY ALL is a form of ORDER BY that automatically adds all
> > non-junk columns from the SELECT target list to the ORDER BY clause.
> >
> > This implementation supports:
> > - ORDER BY ALL (default ascending order)
> > - ORDER BY ALL ASC
> > - ORDER BY ALL DESC
> > - ORDER BY ALL NULLS FIRST/LAST
> > - ORDER BY ALL ASC/DESC NULLS FIRST/LAST
> >
> > The syntax works by creating a marker SortBy node with a NULL
> > node pointer that carries the sort direction and nulls ordering.
> > During query transformation, this marker is detected and expanded
> > to order by all non-junk columns in the target list with the
> > specified direction.
> >
> > Implementation details:
> > - gram.y: Added ORDER BY ALL grammar with optional ASC/DESC and NULLS
> > in both main sort_clause and PLpgSQL_Expr rules
> > - parse_clause.c: Implemented ORDER BY ALL expansion logic that iterates
> > over target list columns
> > - analyze.c: Updated to pass orderByAll flag through transformation
> > - parsenodes.h: Added orderByAll boolean to SelectStmt and Query
> > - ruleutils.c: Added deparsing support for ORDER BY ALL that preserves
> > sort direction and NULLS ordering in view definitions, including proper
> > handling of implicit vs explicit ordering
> >
> > Please take a look at the attached patch and let me know your thoughts.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Rushabh Lathia
> > www.EnterpriseDB.com
> >
>
> Hi! What about SQL standard compatibility? ef38a4d97 was merged only
> after the SQL committee accepted GROUP BY ALL, there was discussion a
> few years before [0] which ended up in nothing because of SQL
> standard... So I wonder what is perspective of this thread
>
>
> [0]
> https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CAAhFRxjyTO5BHn9y1oOSEp0TtpTDTTTb7HJBNhTG%2Bi3-hXC0XQ%40mail.gmail.com

Thanks a lot for sharing this. I was not aware that ORDER BY ALL is not yet
part of SQL Standards (my bad).

>
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Kirill Reshke
>

--
Rushabh Lathia