Confusing documentation of ordered-set aggregates?
От | Florian Pflug |
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Тема | Confusing documentation of ordered-set aggregates? |
Дата | |
Msg-id | 95165C04-FCBE-4AFF-AF7E-17A1C6A66DC1@phlo.org обсуждение исходный текст |
Ответы |
Re: Confusing documentation of ordered-set aggregates?
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Список | pgsql-hackers |
Hi After reading through the relevant parts of sytnax.sgml, create_aggregate.smgl and xaggr.sgml, I think I understand how these work - they work exactly like regular aggregates, except that some arguments are evaluated only once and passed to the final function instead of the transition function. The whole "ORDER BY" thing is just crazy syntax the standard mandates - a saner alternative would have been ordered_set_agg(direct1,...,directN, WITHIN(arg1,...,argM)) or something like that, right? So whether "ORDER BY" implies any actual ordering is up to the ordered-set aggregate's final function. Or at least that's what xaggr.sgml seems to say Unlike the case for normal aggregates, the sorting of input rows for anordered-set aggregate is <emphasis>not</> done behindthe scenes, but isthe responsibility of the aggregate's support functions. but that seems to contradict syntax.sgml which says The expressions in the <replaceable>order_by_clause</replaceable> areevaluated once per input row just like normal aggregatearguments, sortedas per the <replaceable>order_by_clause</replaceable>'s requirements, andfed to the aggregate functionas input arguments. Also, xaggr.sgml has the following to explain why the NULLs are passed for all aggregated arguments to the final function, instead of simply not passing them at all While the null values seem useless at first sight, they are important becausethey make it possible to include the data typesof the aggregated input(s) inthe final function's signature, which may be necessary to resolve the outputtype of a polymorphicaggregate. Why do ordered-set aggregates required that, when plain aggregates are fine without it? array_agg(), for example, also has a result type that is determined by the argument type, yet it's final function doesn't take an argument of type anyelement, even though it returns anyarray. best regards, Florian Pflug
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