Обсуждение: Shouldn't Natural JOINs Follow FK Constraints?

Howdy,

I just saw this in the docs:

> Finally, NATURAL is a shorthand form of USING: it forms a USING list  
> consisting of exactly those column names that appear in both input  
> tables. As with USING, these columns appear only once in the output  
> table.

That sounds useful if I happen to have named my columns exactly the  
same between the two tables, but couldn't a NATURAL JOIN follow the FK  
constraints, instead? That would be so much more useful and much less  
magical, I should think.

Thanks,

David

On Fri, 2008-05-30 at 13:19 -0700, David E. Wheeler wrote:
> Howdy,
> 
> I just saw this in the docs:
> 
> > Finally, NATURAL is a shorthand form of USING: it forms a USING list  
> > consisting of exactly those column names that appear in both input  
> > tables. As with USING, these columns appear only once in the output  
> > table.
> 
> That sounds useful if I happen to have named my columns exactly the  
> same between the two tables, but couldn't a NATURAL JOIN follow the FK  
> constraints, instead? That would be so much more useful and much less  
> magical, I should think.

A good point, but I'm sure the SQL standard has something to say about
this, so I don't think we have much of a choice.

Regards,Jeff Davis