Re: SQL:2011 PERIODS vs Postgres Ranges?

On Sun, 21 Oct 2018 at 14:18, Paul A Jungwirth <pj(at)illuminatedcomputing(dot)com>
wrote:

> Also, just how strictly do we have to follow the standard? Requiring
> sentinels like '01 JAN 3000` just seems so silly. Could Postgres
> permit nullable start/end PERIOD columns, and give them the same
> meaning as ranges (unbounded)? Even if I forgot about ranges
> altogether, I'd sure love to avoid these sentinels.
>

We have "infinity" and "-infinity" values in our date and timestamp types:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/datatype-datetime.html

I think this avoids the silliness with sentinel values.

For myself, I don't care about PERIOD etc. one bit. The "every new
capability gets its own syntax" model that SQL follows is very
old-fashioned, and for good reason. I'm happy with ranges and exclusion
constraints. But if we can provide an implementation of PERIOD that makes
it easier to port applications written for legacy database systems, it
might be worthwhile.