Re: any way for ORDER BY x to imply NULLS FIRST in 8.3?

On Tue, 2007-11-06 at 09:48 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:

> Essentially the same text appears in SQL2003. Any application that
> depends on one particular choice here is therefore broken, or at least
> has chosen to work with only about half of the DBMSes in the world.

If an application has already made that choice then we should allow them
the opportunity to work with PostgreSQL. The application may be at
fault, but PostgreSQL is the loser because of that decision.

The SQL Standard says that the default for this is defined by the
implementation; that doesn't bar us from changing the implementation if
we wish. We can do that without changing PostgreSQL's historic default.

Perhaps we can have a parameter?

default_null_sorting = 'last' # may alternatively be set to 'first'

(or another wording/meaning.)

That is what I thought you'd implemented, otherwise I would have
suggested this myself way back. This new parameter would be a small
change, but will make a major difference to application portability.

This seems like the key to unlocking your new functionality for most
people.

--
Simon Riggs
2ndQuadrant http://www.2ndQuadrant.com