Re: Partial Mode in Aggregate Functions

On Sunday, March 1, 2026, Marcos Pegoraro <marcos(at)f10(dot)com(dot)br> wrote:

> Em sex., 27 de fev. de 2026 às 22:58, David G. Johnston <
> david(dot)g(dot)johnston(at)gmail(dot)com> escreveu:
>
>> I commented about the phrasing for this being not ideal for the target
>>> audience of the functions reference page. Here's some other wording to
>>> consider:
>>
>>
> I sent this link to some colleagues and asked, "Tell me what 'Partial
> Mode' means." Some are developers, some are DBAs, and some are just
> starting out. Those who responded in less than 20 seconds obviously didn't
> read the headers; they just deduced it by looking at the table title. And
> yes, some said it related to aggregating data on fewer records. So, putting
> an explanation in the header probably won't completely solve the problem,
> since many people only look at the table, and if they can draw any
> conclusions from it, they ignore the rest of the text.
>
>
I can’t come up with a better header than Partial Mode. Given the fairly
benign outcome for such a misunderstanding - this isn’t critical to
understand knowledge for writing queries - I can live with people who don’t
read the documentation being misinformed. Though it does make my idea of
just ripping it out, and putting it elsewhere where optimizations are
talked about, more appealing.

David J.