On Fri, 13 Feb 2015 10:48:13 -0800 Jeff Janes <jeff.janes@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 10:26 AM, Bill Moran <wmoran@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > wrote: > > > > Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > > > > Why couldn't an RDBMS such as postgres interpret a SELECT that omits > > the GROUP > > > > BY as implicitly grouping by all the columns that aren't part of an > > aggregate? > > > > I'm Mr. Curious today ... > > > > Why would you think that such a thing is necessary or desirable? Simply > > add the > > columns to the GROUP BY clause and make the request unambiguous. > > Where would the ambiguity be? With a large, complex query, trying to visually read through a list of column selections to figure out which ones _aren't_ aggregated and will be auto-GROUP-BYed would be ... tedious and error prone at best. You're right, though, it wouldn't be "ambiguous" ... that was a poor choice of words on my part. > I waste an inordinate amount of time retyping select lists over into the > group by list, or copying and pasting and then deleting the aggregate > clauses. Interesting ... I've never kept accurate track of the time I spend doing things like that, but "inordinate" seems like quite a lot. In my case, I'm a developer so I would tend toward creating code on the client side that automatically compiled the GROUP BY clause if I found that scenarios like you describe were happening frequently. Of course, that doesn't help a data anaylyst who's just writing queries > It is an entirely pointless exercise. I can't fault PostgreSQL > for following the standard, but its too bad the standards aren't more > sensible. I can't speak to the standard and it's reasons for doing this, but there are certainly some whacko things in the standard. Thanks for the response. -- Bill Moran -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
