Wm.A.Stafford wrote: > I just wanted to issue a blanket "thanks" to all who responded to my > inquiry about what to do about 'unique'. Distinct is the equivalent > aggregate function as many pointed out. A co-worker said that Oracles > 'unique' is probably an optimized version of distinct that takes > advantage of some Oracle specific indexing. > > The example that I used to illustrate my problem in the first place was > seriously flawed as many pointed out. The PostgreSQL db had been > created from a Fastreader control file that had all column names in > double quotes, ex. "total" instead of total; This produced a normal > looking DB that did not react correctly to any SQL that used a column > name. So for example, select count(*) would return the correct row > count but count(some_column) would produce a 'no such column error'. > > My difficulty with unique was mostly caused by the failure of every > attempt to come up with an alternate query which was caused, in turn, > by the columns names used to create the tables. > > All in all, a pretty revolting experience with one possible bright > spot, I think I have proved a little known principle of computer > science: "garbage in, garbage out". I have updated an FAQ item to specifically mention capitalization, so that should help people in the future. -- Bruce Momjian bruce@xxxxxxxxxx EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +
