The following bug has been logged online:
Bug reference: 1948
Logged by: test_autoincrement
Email address: tony@marston-home.demon.co.uk
PostgreSQL version: 8.0.3
Operating system: Windows XP
Description: Enhancement Request - INSERT syntax
Details:
Currently the INSERT statement requires field names and field values to be
presented in separate lists whereas the UPDATE statement requires each field
and value to be presented in a single string (name='value').
The latter is more usable because if there is any validation failure with a
field it is easy to track down down the value in the query sting that goes
with a particular field name. Compare this with a failure on an INSERT
statement containing a large number of fields - you have to count through
the first list to get the index number of the field name, then you have to
count through the list of values to identify the one which goes with that
field name.
This is not user-friendly, and I think the SQL committee made a big mistake
in defining totally different structures for the INSERT and UPDATE
statements.
MySQL already offers this option, so why can't you?