to behave according to SQL92 (or according to my current understanding
of same, anyway). Per pghackers discussion way back in March 2002:
thread 'Do FROM items of different schemas conflict?'
of functions returning domain types, update documentation for typtype,
move get_typtype to lsyscache.c (actually, resurrect the old version),
add defense against creating pseudo-typed table columns, fix some
bogus list-parsing in grammar. Issues remain with respect to alias
handling and type checking; Joe is on those.
types for Table Functions, as previously proposed on HACKERS. Here is a
brief explanation:
1. Creates a new pg_type typtype: 'p' for pseudo type (currently either
'b' for base or 'c' for catalog, i.e. a class).
2. Creates new builtin type of typtype='p' named RECORD. This is the
first of potentially several pseudo types.
3. Modify FROM clause grammer to accept:
SELECT * FROM my_func() AS m(colname1 type1, colname2 type1, ...)
where m is the table alias, colname1, etc are the column names, and
type1, etc are the column types.
4. When typtype == 'p' and the function return type is RECORD, a list
of column defs is required, and when typtype != 'p', it is
disallowed.
5. A check was added to ensure that the tupdesc provide via the parser
and the actual return tupdesc match in number and type of
attributes.
When creating a function you can do:
CREATE FUNCTION foo(text) RETURNS setof RECORD ...
When using it you can do:
SELECT * from foo(sqlstmt) AS (f1 int, f2 text, f3 timestamp)
or
SELECT * from foo(sqlstmt) AS f(f1 int, f2 text, f3 timestamp)
or
SELECT * from foo(sqlstmt) f(f1 int, f2 text, f3 timestamp)
Included in the patches are adjustments to the regression test sql and
expected files, and documentation.
p.s.
This potentially solves (or at least improves) the issue of builtin
Table Functions. They can be bootstrapped as returning RECORD, and
we can wrap system views around them with properly specified column
defs. For example:
CREATE VIEW pg_settings AS
SELECT s.name, s.setting
FROM show_all_settings()AS s(name text, setting text);
Then we can also add the UPDATE RULE that I previously posted to
pg_settings, and have pg_settings act like a virtual table, allowing
settings to be queried and set.
Joe Conway
code review by Tom Lane. Remaining issues: functions that take or
return tuple types are likely to break if one drops (or adds!)
a column in the table defining the type. Need to think about what
to do here.
Along the way: some code review for recent COPY changes; mark system
columns attnotnull = true where appropriate, per discussion a month ago.
some kibitzing from Tom Lane. Not everything works yet, and there's
no documentation or regression test, but let's commit this so Joe
doesn't need to cope with tracking changes in so many files ...
lists to join RTEs, attach a list of Vars and COALESCE expressions that will
replace the join's alias variables during planning. This simplifies
flatten_join_alias_vars while still making it easy to fix up varno references
when transforming the query tree. Add regression test cases for interactions
of subqueries with outer joins.
addRangeTableEntry calls. Remove relname field from RTEs, since
it will no longer be a useful unique identifier of relations;
we want to encourage people to rely on the relation OID instead.
Further work on dumping qual expressions in EXPLAIN, too.
the parsetree representation. As yet we don't *do* anything with schema
names, just drop 'em on the floor; but you can enter schema-compatible
command syntax, and there's even a primitive CREATE SCHEMA command.
No doc updates yet, except to note that you can now extract a field
from a function-returning-row's result with (foo(...)).fieldname.
now has an RTE of its own, and references to its outputs now are Vars
referencing the JOIN RTE, rather than CASE-expressions. This allows
reverse-listing in ruleutils.c to use the correct alias easily, rather
than painfully reverse-engineering the alias namespace as it used to do.
Also, nested FULL JOINs work correctly, because the result of the inner
joins are simple Vars that the planner can cope with. This fixes a bug
reported a couple times now, notably by Tatsuo on 18-Nov-01. The alias
Vars are expanded into COALESCE expressions where needed at the very end
of planning, rather than during parsing.
Also, beginnings of support for showing plan qualifier expressions in
EXPLAIN. There are probably still cases that need work.
initdb forced due to change of stored-rule representation.
default, but OIDS are removed from many system catalogs that don't need them.
Some interesting side effects: TOAST pointers are 20 bytes not 32 now;
pg_description has a three-column key instead of one.
Bugs fixed in passing: BINARY cursors work again; pg_class.relhaspkey
has some usefulness; pg_dump dumps comments on indexes, rules, and
triggers in a valid order.
initdb forced.
clause with an alias is a <subquery> and therefore hides table references
appearing within it, according to the spec. This is the same as the
preliminary patch I posted to pgsql-patches yesterday, plus some really
grotty code in ruleutils.c to reverse-list a query tree with the correct
alias name depending on context. I'd rather not have done that, but unless
we want to force another initdb for 7.1, there's no other way for now.
(Don't forget that an alias is required.) Views reimplemented as expanding
to subselect-in-FROM. Grouping, aggregates, DISTINCT in views actually
work now (he says optimistically). No UNION support in subselects/views
yet, but I have some ideas about that. Rule-related permissions checking
moved out of rewriter and into executor.
INITDB REQUIRED!
SELECT a FROM t1 tx (a);
Allow join syntax, including queries like
SELECT * FROM t1 NATURAL JOIN t2;
Update RTE structure to hold column aliases in an Attr structure.
mentioned in FROM but not elsewhere in the query: such tables should be
joined over anyway. Aside from being more standards-compliant, this allows
removal of some very ugly hacks for COUNT(*) processing. Also, allow
HAVING clause without aggregate functions, since SQL does. Clean up
CREATE RULE statement-list syntax the same way Bruce just fixed the
main stmtmulti production.
CAUTION: addition of a field to RangeTblEntry nodes breaks stored rules;
you will have to initdb if you have any rules.
of the SELECT part of the statement is just like a plain SELECT. All
INSERT-specific processing happens after the SELECT parsing is done.
This eliminates many problems, e.g. INSERT ... SELECT ... GROUP BY using
the wrong column labels. Ensure that DEFAULT clauses are coerced to
the target column type, whether or not stored clause produces the right
type. Substantial cleanup of parser's array support.
Bruce Momjian