Re: [HACKERS] Oops, I seem to have changed UNION's behavior

Hello!

On Sun, 7 Feb 1999, Tom Lane wrote:
> The equal() updates I installed yesterday (to fix the "don't know
> whether nodes of type 600 are equal" problem) have had an unintended
> side effect.
> 
> Am I right in thinking that UNION (without ALL) is defined to do a
> DISTINCT on its result, so that duplicates are removed even if the
> duplicates both came from the same source table?  That's what 6.4.2
> does, but I do not know if it's strictly kosher according to the SQL
> spec.
  Yes, this is standard. My books (primary, Gruber) say UNION should work
this way - UNION without ALL implies DISTINCT.

> If so, the code is now busted, because with the equal() extension in
> place, cnfify() is able to recognize and remove duplicate select
> clauses.  That is, "SELECT xxx UNION SELECT xxx" will be folded to
> just "SELECT xxx" ... and that doesn't mean the same thing.
> 
> An actual example: given the data
> 
> play=> select a from tt;
> a
> -
> 1
> 1
> 2
> 3
> (4 rows)
> 
> Under 6.4.2 I get:
> 
> play=> select a from tt union select a from tt;
> a
> -
> 1
> 2
> 3
> (3 rows)
> 
> Note lack of duplicate "1".  Under current sources I get:
> 
> ttest=> select a from tt union select a from tt;
> a
> -
> 1
> 1
> 2
> 3
> (4 rows)
> 
> since the query is effectively reduced to just "select a from tt".
  I am sure my books did not consider such case as UNION that could be
otimized this way. Not sure what is Right Thing here...

Oleg.
----    Oleg Broytmann  National Research Surgery Centre  http://sun.med.ru/~phd/          Programmers don't die, they
justGOSUB without RETURN.