Re: [PATCH] Implement INSERT SET syntax

On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 6:31 PM Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> On Sun, Aug 18, 2019 at 11:00 AM Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> > Perhaps the way to resolve Peter's objection is to make the syntax
> > more fully like UPDATE:
> >
> > INSERT INTO target SET c1 = x, c2 = y+z, ... FROM tables-providing-x-y-z
> >
> > (with the patch as-submitted corresponding to the case with an empty
> > FROM clause, hence no variables in the expressions-to-be-assigned).
> >
> > Of course, this is not functionally distinct from
> >
> > INSERT INTO target(c1,c2,...) SELECT x, y+z, ... FROM
> tables-providing-x-y-z
> >
> > and it's fair to question whether it's worth supporting a nonstandard
> > syntax just to allow the target column names to be written closer to
> > the expressions-to-be-assigned.
>
> For what it's worth, I think this would be useful enough to justify
> its existence. Back in days of yore when dragons roamed the earth and
> I wrote database-driven applications instead of hacking on the
> database itself, I often wondered why I had to write two
> completely-different looking SQL statements, one to insert the data
> which a user had entered into a webform into the database, and another
> to update previously-entered data. This feature would allow those
> queries to be written in the same way, which would have pleased me,
> back in the day.
>

I still do, and this would be a big help. I don't care if it's
non-standard.

.m