Re: ROW features

Thomas Lockhart wrote:
> I have implemented the ROW keyword, but am not sure that I've gotten
> what the spec intends to be the full scope of functionality. It may be
> that I've missed the main point completely :)
> 
> If someone has the time and interest I'd appreciate it if they would go
> through the SQL99 spec and see what they deduce about the ROW keyword
> and the underlying functionality which goes along with it. It seemed to
> enable (at least) having an explicit keyword to introduce row clauses
> (thus eliminating the ambiguity between a single-column row and a
> parenthesized expression) and that is what I implemented. But I get
> hints from reading the spec that there may be more involved, including
> (perhaps) something like name/value pairs in a row expression.
> 
> afaict the spec is not at all verbose about this, and is very dense and
> obtuse where it does discuss it. So more pairs of eyes would be greatly
> appreciated...

Obtuse indeed!

Under 6 Scalar expressions -> 6.1 <data type> I see (my take):   ROW ( column_name data_type [,...] )
and under 7 Query expressions -> 7.1 <row value constructor>:   ROW ( value_expression [,...] )

Can you send examples of how these would be used?

It seems this is related to the RECORD pseudo type patch I just 
submitted (see:   http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-patches/2002-07/msg00286.php
) and the CREATE composite type proposal I sent in last night (no link 
in the archives yet), but it isn't clear to if or how anything would 
need to be changed.

Thanks,

Joe