Re: Order of items in FROM causes error?

On Fri, 1 Apr 2005, Rosser Schwarz wrote:

> A colleague has the following query, which errors with: relation "dl"
> does not exist.  (See the second item in the FROM clause.)  If that
> item is moved to immediately precede the first JOIN item however, the
> query works as expected.
>
> select u.usersfirstname || ' ' ||  u.userslastname as userssupervisorsname
>      , l.locationsname || ' >> ' || lv.listvaluesname as locationdepartment
>      , lvcat.listvaluesname as usersemploymentcategory
>      , lvclass.listvaluesname as usersemploymentclass
>      , lvacdcat.listcategoriesname as usersacdcategory
>   from intranet.tbl_users u
>      , intranet.tbl_departmentslocations dl
>      , intranet.tbl_listvalues lvcat
>      , intranet.tbl_listvalues lvclass
>      , intranet.tbl_listcategories lvacdcat
>   join intranet.tbl_listvalues lv on dl.listvaluesid = lv.listvaluesid
>   join intranet.tbl_locations l on dl.locationsid = l.locationsid
>  where u.usersid = 199
>    and dl.listvaluesid = 13
>    and lvcat.listvaluesid = 23
>    and lvclass.listvaluesid = 27
>    and lvacdcat.listcategoriesid = 6
>
> This strikes me as a bug.  Is it known behavior?  A quick search
> doesn't turn up much, but that may be a weakness in my google-fu.

SQL seems to say that join binds more tightly than commas, so I don't
believe dl is in scope for either of those ON clauses in the explicit join
syntax.