On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 6:31 PM Robert Haas <robertmh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 18, 2019 at 11:00 AM Tom Lane <t...@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote: > > Perhaps the way to resolve Peter's objection is to make the syntax > > more fully like UPDATE: > > > > INSERT INTO target SET c1 = x, c2 = y+z, ... FROM tables-providing-x-y-z > > > > (with the patch as-submitted corresponding to the case with an empty > > FROM clause, hence no variables in the expressions-to-be-assigned). > > > > Of course, this is not functionally distinct from > > > > INSERT INTO target(c1,c2,...) SELECT x, y+z, ... FROM > tables-providing-x-y-z > > > > and it's fair to question whether it's worth supporting a nonstandard > > syntax just to allow the target column names to be written closer to > > the expressions-to-be-assigned. > > For what it's worth, I think this would be useful enough to justify > its existence. Back in days of yore when dragons roamed the earth and > I wrote database-driven applications instead of hacking on the > database itself, I often wondered why I had to write two > completely-different looking SQL statements, one to insert the data > which a user had entered into a webform into the database, and another > to update previously-entered data. This feature would allow those > queries to be written in the same way, which would have pleased me, > back in the day. > I still do, and this would be a big help. I don't care if it's non-standard. .m
