Re: SQL feature requests

Gregory Stark <stark@enterprisedb.com> writes:
> "Tom Lane" <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> writes:
>> ... note that we fail to meet (c)
>> exactly, since we don't bother to generate names that are distinct ---
>> but in practice no one seems to care about that.)

> Actually I suspect there are people who get annoyed by it when they try to
> reference a column by name in a client driver like DBI which allows that. 

> Note that if you use something like fetchrow_hashref it will actually condense
> out duplicate column names since it loads the row into a hash. So if you
> you're writing a program which just wants to dump the record without
> understanding it you probably load it into a hash and then dump the hash in
> key=>value form. And that will cause some columns to be dropped in the output.

> But those people probably just figure it was their own fault and put in
> aliases in their queries.

Well, if you're using client-side code that depends on access by name
rather than field position, you definitely have to put in AS clauses.
Even if we did generate distinct names, a client couldn't rely on
knowing in advance what they'd be.
        regards, tom lane