784e762e88
This patch adds the ability to write TABLE( function1(), function2(), ...) as a single FROM-clause entry. The result is the concatenation of the first row from each function, followed by the second row from each function, etc; with NULLs inserted if any function produces fewer rows than others. This is believed to be a much more useful behavior than what Postgres currently does with multiple SRFs in a SELECT list. This syntax also provides a reasonable way to combine use of column definition lists with WITH ORDINALITY: put the column definition list inside TABLE(), where it's clear that it doesn't control the ordinality column as well. Also implement SQL-compliant multiple-argument UNNEST(), by turning UNNEST(a,b,c) into TABLE(unnest(a), unnest(b), unnest(c)). The SQL standard specifies TABLE() with only a single function, not multiple functions, and it seems to require an implicit UNNEST() which is not what this patch does. There may be something wrong with that reading of the spec, though, because if it's right then the spec's TABLE() is just a pointless alternative spelling of UNNEST(). After further review of that, we might choose to adopt a different syntax for what this patch does, but in any case this functionality seems clearly worthwhile. Andrew Gierth, reviewed by Zoltán Böszörményi and Heikki Linnakangas, and significantly revised by me
The PostgreSQL contrib tree
---------------------------
This subtree contains porting tools, analysis utilities, and plug-in
features that are not part of the core PostgreSQL system, mainly
because they address a limited audience or are too experimental to be
part of the main source tree. This does not preclude their
usefulness.
User documentation for each module appears in the main SGML
documentation.
When building from the source distribution, these modules are not
built automatically, unless you build the "world" target. You can
also build and install them all by running "gmake all" and "gmake
install" in this directory; or to build and install just one selected
module, do the same in that module's subdirectory.
Some directories supply new user-defined functions, operators, or
types. To make use of one of these modules, after you have installed
the code you need to register the new SQL objects in the database
system by executing a CREATE EXTENSION command. In a fresh database,
you can simply do
CREATE EXTENSION module_name;
See the PostgreSQL documentation for more information about this
procedure.