Re: [PATCH] GROUP BY ALL

Isaac Morland <isaac(dot)morland(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> And for when this might be useful, the syntax for it already exists,
> although a spurious error message is generated:

> odyssey=> select (uw_term).*, count(*) from uw_term group by uw_term;
> ERROR: column "uw_term.term_id" must appear in the GROUP BY clause or be
> used in an aggregate function
> LINE 1: select (uw_term).*, count(*) from uw_term group by uw_term;
> ^

> I'm not sure exactly what's going on here

The SELECT entry is expanded into "uw_term.col1, uw_term.col2,
uw_term.col3, ...", and those single-column Vars don't match the
whole-row Var appearing in the GROUP BY list. I guess if we
think this is important, we could add a proof rule saying that
a per-column Var is functionally dependent on a whole-row Var
of the same relation. Odd that the point hasn't come up before
(though I guess that suggests that few people try this).

regards, tom lane