Re: ODBC 3.0 functions (UCASE, LCASE, etc.) - Mailing list pgsql-general

This is clearly a good idea.  It is easy to create SQL functions as
synonyms for existing functions.  You can even alter the arguments.  I
would encourage anyone who wants to start coding an SQL file of
compatibility functions.

> On Thu, 3 May 2001, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>
> >
> > This sounds good.  Would these exist in ODBC or in the backend?  My
> > understanding is that these are best done in ODBC.
>
> It's not so much an ODBC problem *per se*, but, rather, that many
> databases offer 'functions' (some from standards, some made up) that we
> don't have. (The ODBC specs just happen to recommend a large slew of
> them.)
>
> I'd think these would have to be backend functions, but probably best not
> actually in the backend source.
>
> Since we can create functions easily, and since few of these things are
> actually new features, but re-named/re-ordered functions we already have,
> it wouldn't seem too onerous to make wrappers around these, or hook some
> of these in as aliases for existing functions/types.
>
> Things like:
>
>  - aliasing int to mediumint
>  - alias textcat to concat
>  - iif( condition, true_expr, false_expr )
>  - first(), last() aggregates
>  - std() as an alias for stddev()
>
> Yes, some of these *are* ugly, non-standard forms used by other databases.
> Read on for why I still think it could be a good idea.
>
> Some things we have (like existing odbc.sql file in src/interfaces/odbc),
> or in contrib/ (like soundex) are probably missed by many users. (And,
> although this is probably intentional, are left off of MySQL's crash-me).
>
> Perhaps a useful form would be a folder of function wrappers, group by
> 'competitor':
>
>   oracle.sql
>   mysql.sql
>   access.sql
>   odbc.sql
>
> which would contain the wrappers functions for these systems. Of course,
> we can't mimic *everything* (at least not in plpgsql functions ;-) )
> but we might be able to do much better.
>
>
> I know it seems like a trivial thing, but it's not too infrequent that
> I'll hear someone chatting online/posting a follow-up message about how
> they've evaluated PostgreSQl, or another product, but didn't use it
> because we lacked feature foo(), when it's there, and just called feature
> bar().
>
> Anyway, this isn't an itch that I *need* to scratch -- right now,
> all I use in the office is PostgreSQL for backend work :-). But I think in
> the 'how easy are we to evaluate and use' department, it could be a small,
> but helpful win.
>
> --
> Joel Burton   <jburton@scw.org>
> Director of Information Systems, Support Center of Washington
>
>

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