Re: Declarative partitioning - another take

Yeah.  That syntax has some big advantages, though.  If we define that
partition as START ('2014-01-01') INCLUSIVE END ('2014-12-31')
INCLUSIVE, there's no way for the system to tell that the there's no
gap between the that ending bound and the starting bound of the 2015
partition, because the system has no domain-specific knowledge that
there is no daylight between 2014-12-31 and 2015-01-01.  So if we
allow things to be specified that way, then people will use that
syntax and then complain when it doesn't perform quite as well as
START ('2014-01-01') END ('2015-01-01').  Maybe the difference isn't
material and maybe we don't care; what do you think?

(I really don't want to get tied up adding a system for adding and
subtracting one to and from arbitrary data types.  Life is too short.
If that requires that users cope with a bit of cognitive dissidence,
well, it's not the first time something like that will have happened.
I have some cognitive dissidence about the fact that creat(2) has no
trailing "e" but truncate(2) does, and moreover the latter can be used
to make a file longer rather than shorter.  But, hey, that's what you
get for choosing a career in computer science.)