Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> I remember there was a time when you couldn't say "SELECT a x FROM
> foo" in PostgreSQL. We told people that it was because our syntax was
> more flexible - we have postfix operators, or something.
Which it was, and yes that was the reason. We eventually thought of a
kluge solution that lets you omit "AS" 90% of the time, which is better
than nothing; but I doubt it would ever have been accepted if it weren't
a matter of improving standards compliance. I am pretty sure that the
SQL spec doesn't say that you should be able to apply LIKE directly to
an integer, so that issue isn't comparable to this one.
> I don't know whether a similar improvement is
> possible in this area, but we're certainly not going to get there by
> labeling the user's expectations as unreasonable. I don't think they
> are, and the people who wrote MySQL and Oracle evidently agree.
The people who wrote MySQL had very poor taste in a lot of areas, and
we are not going to blindly follow their lead. Oracle is not a terribly
presentable system either. Having said that, I don't object to any
clean improvements we can think of in this area --- but "make it work
more like MySQL" had better not be the only argument for it.
regards, tom lane