Re: wCTE: about the name of the feature

On 02/24/2011 11:20 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> The wCTE patch refers to the feature it's adding as "DML WITH". I'm
> still pretty unhappy with that terminology. In my view of the world,
> "DML" includes SELECT as well as INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE. The wikipedia
> entry about the term
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Manipulation_Language
> agrees that that's at least the majority usage, and even our own docs
> seem to use it to include SELECT as often as not. Since the distinction
> is absolutely critical to talking about this feature sensibly, I don't
> think it's a good plan to use an acronym that is guaranteed to produce
> uncertainty in the reader's mind.
>
> The best idea I have at the moment is to spell out "data modifying
> command" (or "statement") rather than relying on the acronym.
> In the code, we could change hasDmlWith to hasModifyingWith, for
> example. The error messages could read like
> data-modifying statement in WITH is not allowed in a view
>
> Comments?
>

I think your're absolutely right. DML means that to me too. It's in
effect the opposite of DDL.

log_statement used "mod" for this category of statements. If we need a
new acronym, I modestly suggest "CUD" (CRUD without the R). The we could
make all sorts of puns about "chewing the CUD" :-)

cheers

andrew