Re: [SQL] [GENERAL] CURRENT_TIMESTAMP

On Fri, 2002-10-04 at 01:41, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Well, let's see what others say. If no one is excited about the change,
> we can just document its current behavior. Oh, I see it is already
> documented in func.sgml:
>
> It is quite important to realize that
> <function>CURRENT_TIMESTAMP</function> and related functions all return
> the time as of the start of the current transaction; their values do not
> increment while a transaction is running. But
> <function>timeofday()</function> returns the actual current time.
>
> Seems that isn't helping enough to reduce the number of people who are
> surprised by our behavior. I don't think anyone would be surprised by
> statement time.
>
> What do others think?

I would prefer that CURRENT_TIME[STAMP] always produce the same time
within a transaction. If it is changed, it will certainly break one of
my applications, which explicitly depends on the current behaviour. If
you change it, please provide an alternative way of doing the same
thing.

I can see that the current behaviour might give surprising results in a
long running transaction. Surprise could be reduced by giving the time
of first use within the transaction rather than the start of the
transaction.

--
Oliver Elphick Oliver(dot)Elphick(at)lfix(dot)co(dot)uk
Isle of Wight, UK
http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
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