Re: Hierarchical Queries--Stalled No Longer...

On Thu, Sep 22, 2005 at 11:19:13AM -0400, Jonah H. Harris wrote:

Hi,

> Evgen Potemkin has granted me a BSD license on the patch for hierarchical
> queries (WITH and CONNECT BY) and I'd like to get it on track for PostgreSQL
> 8.2. Tom, Bruce, Simon, Alvaro, Josh, et al., have you guys used the patch?
> If so, what comments do you have as to what you'd like to see.

Tom has repeteadly said the patch is more or less useless, and that if
you wanted to implement this feature you'd better start from scratch.

I've looked at the patch a couple of times and I somewhat agree with
this, though I don't remember what my reservations were. One important
point is that CONNECT BY is not really SQL syntax, is it? In this case,
I think you should pull out the CONNECT BY part and implement only WITH,
which is the SQL-mandated syntax AFAIK.

One point with the patch AFAIR is that it didn't try to optimize the
query at all, which may be OK as a first cut but for a real-world
implementation you really need it to do.

--
Alvaro Herrera http://www.advogato.org/person/alvherre
"Oh, great altar of passive entertainment, bestow upon me thy discordant images
at such speed as to render linear thought impossible" (Calvin a la TV)