Personally, I agree. The '?' sucks for multiple reasons. The major reason being when you want to use the same parameter in more than one place in a statement. Another reason is query rewrites where you have to reorganize the actual order of parameters. You are then forced to first convert the '?' into some other form (like the $1, $2 syntax that PostgreSQL uses today).
But even if it sucks, it's used by a very broad range of clients. As Greg mentions, both ODBC and JDBC uses this syntax and no other SQL database that I know of treats '?' as an operator. The '?' is, and will remain, a parameter placeholder in SQL for most people. So even if '?' shouldn't be emulated at this time, perhaps it would be a good idea to abandon it as a valid operator? Kind regards, Thomas Hallgren "Greg Stark" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Tom Lane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Abhijit Menon-Sen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Should Postgres accept ? as a placeholder? > > > > In short, I think this notation sucks and I don't want to emulate it. > > Certainly it sucks. Unfortunately it's the supported ODBC API which is > emulated by everyone else, including JDBC and DBI. So the world's pretty much > stuck with it. > > However this isn't Postgres's problem. If you want to write code that works > with multiple databases then you're going to want to be using something like > ODBC or JDBC or DBI anyways. In which case it's the driver's responsibility to > provide the standard API which includes translating ? into appropriate syntax > for the database. > > In other words, your problem should already be solved by your driver. > > -- > greg > > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command > (send "unregister YourEmailAddressHere" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]) > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
