Re: DELETE syntax on JOINS

Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)commandprompt(dot)com> writes:
> Bruce Momjian wrote:
>> So the problem is that our DELETE ... USING does not allow ANSI join
>> syntax? Can that be added?

> Not sure about that. USING is already an extension to the standard, so
> if we extend it a bit more, it can't be a problem, can it?

I don't see any very good way to extend the USING syntax to allow the
target table to be outer-joined to something else. Some other systems
allow it by letting you re-specify the target in the other clause,
equivalently to

DELETE FROM target t USING t LEFT JOIN other_table ot ON ...

but we have always considered that the target is *not* to be identified
with any member of the FROM/USING clause, so it would be a serious
compatibility break to change that now.

regards, tom lane