Re: [HACKERS] Enhancing PGSQL to be compatible with Informix SQL

On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Bruce Momjian wrote:

> > > Thomas has tried to explain the ANSI syntax for outer joins, and I must
> > > say I am quite confused by it.  A simple OUTER added before the column
> > > name would be a quick and simple way to do outers, perhap get them into
> > > 7.0, and allow new users to do outers without having to learn the quite
> > > complex ANSI syntax.
> > > 
> > > At least that was my idea.
> > 
> > First, I'm for getting OUTER JOINs in ASAP...but, I'm a little concerned
> > with thought of throwing in what *sounds* like a 'stop gap' measure...
> > 
> > Just to clarify..."A simple OUTER added before the column" would be a
> > PostgreSQL-ism?  Sort of like Oracle and all the rest have their own
> > special traits?  Eventually, the plan is to implement OJs as "SQL92 spec",
> > and leave our -ism in for backwards compatibility?
> 
> Yes, OUTER is an Informix-ism.  Oracle uses *=.  I think the first is
> easier to add and makes more sense for us.  *= could be defined by
> someone as an operator, and overloading our already complex operator
> code to do *= for OUTER may be too complex for people to understand.
> 
> It would be:
> 
>     SELECT *
>     FROM tab1, OUTER tab2
>     WHERE tab1.col1 = tab2.col2

What about >2 table joins?  Wish I had my book here, but I though tyou
could do multiple OUTER joins, no?


Marc G. Fournier                   ICQ#7615664               IRC Nick: Scrappy
Systems Administrator @ hub.org 
primary: scrappy@hub.org           secondary: scrappy@{freebsd|postgresql}.org