David Johnston <polobo@yahoo.com> writes:
> The original design references the spec as allowing a column reference if it
> is a group by key:
> Select cume_dist(f1) within group ( order by f1 ) from text_tbl group by f1
> No example was shown where this would be useful...but nonetheless the
> comment and error both presume that such is true.
I can see no support for that position in the spec text, and as you say,
the usefulness is at best really debatable. Unless somebody can present a
credible use-case, or convince me that this is indeed what the spec says,
I'd be inclined to blow this off in favor of having a more intelligible
error message. (I think if you really did need such functionality, you
could get it with a sub-select.)
regards, tom lane