Re: Partial Mode in Aggregate Functions - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From David Rowley
Subject Re: Partial Mode in Aggregate Functions
Date
Msg-id CAApHDvoez7-dfCEt+w8QXSHxTXgDewAumVAw_jjZ2NHBEDRF6g@mail.gmail.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Partial Mode in Aggregate Functions  (Marcos Pegoraro <marcos@f10.com.br>)
Responses Re: Partial Mode in Aggregate Functions
List pgsql-hackers
On Fri, 27 Feb 2026 at 00:44, Marcos Pegoraro <marcos@f10.com.br> wrote:
>
> Em qui., 26 de fev. de 2026 às 01:57, David Rowley <dgrowleyml@gmail.com> escreveu:
>>
>> As for the proposed patch, I'm strongly against it. If people are
>> confused about what partial aggregation is, then let's modify the
>> documentation to explain what it means.
>
> Well, I started this because the way it's written is confusing, so much so that I showed a link [1] from someone who
speaksEnglish better than me saying that PARTIAL is FILTER. 
> And from the user point of view, who is reading just that page, partial means incomplete, a subset of, etc. So I
thinkit's easy for the reader to misunderstand. Whether Parallel Mode is the best term to use here, I don't know, but
I'mconvinced that the way it is written is easy to confuse. 

Does the wording I proposed make it easier to understand why the word
"partial" is in the name?

> [1] - https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/partial-aggregation-the-beautiful-way/

I've never heard anyone using "partial" for FILTER before. The blog is
from 2015, and partial aggregates got committed in 2016. I hope nobody
would use the partial terminology for FILTER today, as we now have
something else using that name.

David



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