Re: WIP: Allow SQL-language functions to reference parameters by parameter name

On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 8:58 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
>> On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 5:52 PM, Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> wrote:
>>> That doesn't mean we should arbitrarily break compatibility with pl/sql, nor
>>> that we should feel free to add on warts such as $varname that are
>>> completely at odds with the style of the rest of the language. That doesn't
>>> do anything except produce a mess.
>
>> Well, what it does is avoid breaking compatibility with previous
>> versions of PostgreSQL.  I think that actually does have some value.
>> Otherwise, we'd be folding to upper-case by default.
>
> Well, if we're going to consider 100% backwards compatibility a "must",
> then we should just stick with what the submitted patch does, ie,
> unqualified names are matched first to query columns, and to parameters
> only if there's no column match.  This is also per spec if I interpreted
> Peter's comments correctly.  The whole thread started because I
> suggested that throwing an error for ambiguous cases might be a better
> design in the long run, but apparently long term ease of code
> maintenance is far down our list of priorities ...

+1, as long as you are 100.0% sure this is not going to break any
existing code.  For example, what happens if the argument is named the
same as a table?

merlin