Re: Group By and wildcards...

On Sat, Feb 19, 2005 at 12:07:12 -0200,
  Jon Lapham <lapham@jandr.org> wrote:
> When using queries with aggregate functions, is there any way to not
> have to have to explicitly write all the columns names after the GROUP
> BY ?  I would like to use a wildcard "*".
>
> Imagine tables a, b, c, d each with hundreds of columns.
>
> As an example, I would like to write:
>
> SELECT a.*, b.*, c.*, SUM(d.blah)
> FROM a, b, c, d
> WHERE <some join conditions>
> GROUP BY a.*, b.*, c.*
>
> Instead of having to expand the "GROUP BY a.*, b.*, c.*" using the
> explicit column names of all the column in a, b, and c.
>
> This becomes a maintenance nightmare as you add/drop column in these
> tables...
>
> Thanks for any advice on how to handle this,
> -Jon

Don't those tables have primary keys? Grouping by the primay key of each
table will produce the same result set as grouping by all of the columns.