Hi
Often I find myself
working in a query where I need to select one or two fields from source
table A
as renamed objects (
usually to prevent name duplication with other selected fields from another
joined
source table B ) and
then to also select all the remaining fields from source table
A
I end up having to
type out every field name from the underlying tables in the SELECT
clause,
which is remedial
and dull, and adds to code maintenance, as everytime I add a new field to
the
table structure, I
have to re-edit the queries as well.
In this situation I
cant help but think it would be great to have something like the "all
fields" * keyword token
as per the
SELECT * sql command, that would add into the select field list any fields
that have not been specifically referenced yet
eg SELECT
**
or SELECT
&
A visual example of
what I mean
Table
Fields
A
job
A
description
A
amount
B
job
B sub-item
B amount
The sql
command
SELECT A.*,
B.*
FROM A,
B
WHERE A.Job = B.Job
results in all
fields, but some have to be renamed to prevent duplicated names ( Job and Amount
fields )
Job
table A
Description
table A
Amount
table A
Job_1
table B
Sub_Item
table B
Amount_1
table B
so I end up doing
something like this
SELECT
A.job, A.description, A.amount AS total_amount, B.*
FROM A, B
WHERE A.Job = B.Job
typing out all the
field names from table A ( which can be a lot more than this simple example !!!
)
this results in the
following data struture ( field names )
Job
Description
Total_Amount
( manually renamed Table A's Amount field. To prevent clash with
Table B's Amount field )
Job_1
( Table B's Job field, auto renamed to prevent clash with earlier
inclusion of Table A's Job field )
Sub_Item
Amount
but if I then add
any new fields to Table A, the 2nd query will never pick them up, as the SELECT
clause is restrictive in its coding ( I did not use the * token to get all
fields )
What I see as being
usefull is something like this
SELECT
A.amount AS total_amount, A.** , B.*
FROM A, B
WHERE A.Job = B.Job
this results in the
following data struture ( field names )
Total_Amount
( manually renamed Table A's Amount field. To prevent clash with
Table B's Amount field )
Job
auto included by the A.** in the select
clause
Description
auto included by the A.** in the select
clause
Job_1
( Table B's Job field, auto renamed to prevent clash with earlier
inclusion of Table A's Job field )
Sub_Item
Amount
Note Table A field
Amount is not added in automatically by the "Select A.**" code as this field has
already been referenced manually by
the "Select A.amount
AS total_amount" code
Does something like
this already exist,
is there a way
around the problem
or would this make a
useful additional feature ?
Thanks
Matthew Smith
