Re: BUG #6051: wCTE query fail with wrong error text on a table with rules

Merlin Moncure <mmoncure(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 10:42 AM, Jehan-Guillaume (ioguix) de Rorthais
> <jgdr(at)dalibo(dot)com> wrote:
>> test=# CREATE RULE test_ins AS ON INSERT TO test DO INSTEAD INSERT INTO
>> test2 VALUES (NEW.i);
>> CREATE RULE
>> test=# WITH t1 AS (
>> DELETE FROM ONLY test RETURNING *
>> )
>> INSERT INTO test SELECT * FROM t1;
>> ERROR: could not find CTE "t1"

> IIRC the fact that rules don't play nice with wCTE was brought up
> several times during the implementation discussions. I'm not saying
> the error message is great, but you can pretty much add this to the
> giant pile of reasons not to use rules at all (particularly in 9.1
> with the view triggers).

There are definitely cases that don't work, but I had thought we at
least threw an intelligible "not implemented" error for all of them.
This one seems to be an oversight: specifically, rewriteRuleAction()
isn't considering the possibility that the rewritten rule action will
need to make use of CTEs from the original query.

We could paste a copy of the original's cteList into the rule action,
but there are still issues:

* If there's more than one rule action, we could end up executing
multiple copies of the same CTE query; which breaks the expectation
of single evaluation for a CTE.

* If there are CTEs attached to the rule action, as well as to the
original query, and there is a conflict of CTE names between them,
we can't handle that AFAICS. (The planner expects to look up entries
in a cteList by name...)

* Maybe some other things that aren't obvious yet.

I don't particularly mind throwing a not-implemented error for the first
case (ie, just say multiple rule actions don't mix with CTE queries);
but the second case seems seriously annoying, since there's no way for
someone to write a CTE-containing rule action without risking a
conflict. Ideas anybody?

regards, tom lane