Today, im resorting to a function that receives the necessary parameters from the attributes definition/selection area in a sql select query, called by each tuple retrieved. A proper syntax show be real cool
Thanks!
I'm not aware of any efforts to implement this at this time, mostly because I don't think it's supported in the SQL Standard. Being in the standard would change the question from "why" to "why not".
I've used that feature when I worked with Oracle in a data warehouse situation. I found it most useful when migrating data dumps from mainframes where the data file contained subrecords and in cases where one field in a row changes the meaning of subsequent fields in the same row. That may sound like a First Normal Form violation, and it is, but such data formats are common in the IBM VSAM world, or at least they were in the data dumps that I had to import.
