Re: Can function results be used in WHERE?

Aaron Bono wrote:
> First I recommend making your function IMMUTABLE since, given the same
> arguments, it gives the same result - this will allow PostgreSQL to
> optimize the function call and cache the results.
Will do!

> Then, don't use "4", use "calculate_distance(lat,lon,
> 37.789629,-122.422082)". That use is very ambiguous and subject to
> breaking if you change the columns in your select. It may also be the
> reason you have a problem though I don't use that syntax so cannot be
> sure.
I think it is ugly also, but no other syntax seems to work:

stage=# select
pod_code,lat,lon,calculate_distance(lat,lon,37.789629,-122.422082) as
dist from eg_pod where dist < 1 order by dist desc limit 10;
ERROR: column "dist" does not exist

stage=# select
pod_code,lat,lon,calculate_distance(lat,lon,37.789629,-122.422082) as
dist from eg_pod where 4 < 1 order by dist desc limit 10;

pod_code | lat | lon | dist
----------+-----------+-------------+------------------
20 | 1 | 1 | 7962.56837300854
36 | 37.39424 | -122.077673 | 33.2296275931303
45 | 37.426929 | -122.161922 | 28.8542985664155
44 | 37.422813 | -122.172403 | 28.8253772580912
22 | 37.444638 | -122.156875 | 27.9378660315883
34 | 37.875915 | -122.257427 | 10.7947710258918
81 | 37.903325 | -122.29963 | 10.323500058406
33 | 37.868001 | -122.261818 | 10.2977353566856
17 | 37.873002 | -122.26968 | 10.1277713471574
14 | 37.869574 | -122.267937 | 10.0742861708283
(10 rows)

> The only difference between HAVING and WHERE is that WHERE occurs
> before a GROUP BY and HAVING occurs after. Since you have no GROUP BY
> there should be no difference in the queries. The only other
> difference is the "4 > 5::double precision" so that is where I would
> start.
WHERE does nothing in my example.
HAVING filters the results according to distance.
So there's got to be more to it.

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