Re: Proposal: QUALIFY clause

On Mon, Jul 21, 2025 at 10:26:51PM +0200, Vik Fearing wrote:
> On 21/07/2025 19:30, Tom Lane wrote:
> > * I'm not exactly convinced that the committee would standardize
> > it just like this. For one thing, QUALIFY is not even the right
> > part of speech: it's a verb, and thus more fit to be a primary
> > statement keyword. What you need here is an adverb (I think ...
> > been a long time since high school English, but my dictionary
> > says WHERE is an adverb). Maybe they'd be persuaded to do what
> > the existing implementations did, but I wouldn't be at all surprised
> > if they choose a different keyword.

Or a gerund, which is what HAVING is. Or a conjugated verb or something
like QUALIFIED BY, though really "qualif*" seems just wrong. This is
just another name for a WHERE that, like HAVING is paired with some
other language feature (like GROUP BY) and applies to that clause. I
don't have a better keyword(s) to offer, just sadness.

> I am pretty sure that the keyword will be QUALIFY. There are just too many
> existing implementations for the standard to go against them all.  (Also,
> another rdbms just implemented it that way in their upcoming product.)

Bummer.