Re: ORDER BY ALL

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

--
Best regards,
Kirill Reshke