Re: Call for Google Summer of Code mentors, admins

On Mon, Apr 08, 2013 at 10:06:58PM +0100, Simon Riggs wrote:
> Just reading GSoC project ideas...
> On 18 February 2013 17:12, David Fetter <david@fetter.org> wrote:
> > > - Please suggest project ideas for GSOC
> >
> > UPDATE ... RETURNING OLD
>
> Not sure what that is, but...

Perhaps asking would help :)

At the moment, we have a system where only some DML commands return
rows, and then only sometimes, to wit:

- SELECT generally returns rows.
- INSERT can return expressions on the rows inserted with a RETURNING
  clause.
- UPDATE ... RETURNING can return expressions on new versions of the
  rows affected, but not the old ones.
- DELETE can return expressions on the rows deleted.

Of the above, only SELECT can return aggregates.

There are several more DML operations with odd inability to return
rows, but UPDATE's the one that really stands out, and is a bite-sized
chunk in the sense of having a relatively small scope of design and
not touching parts of the system unless they use the new grammar.

> > Add RETURNING to DDL (CREATE, ALTER, DROP) and possible DCL (GRANT,
> > REVOKE), time permitting.
>
> -1 on that idea
>
> Making DDL less standard and more complex isn't good.

Sometimes implementations lead the standard, as POSTGRES did.  In no
case have I proposed anything which would conflict with any existing
or (to the best of my knowledge) any proposed standard.

Would a PoC implementation with docs help get better lights on this?

Cheers,
David.
--
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
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