On 30 June 2017 at 10:04, Ashutosh Bapat
<ashutosh.bapat@enterprisedb.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 30, 2017 at 1:36 PM, Amit Langote
> <Langote_Amit_f8@lab.ntt.co.jp> wrote:
>>
>> Alright, I spent some time implementing a patch to allow specifying
>> -infinity and +infinity in arbitrary ways. Of course, it prevents
>> nonsensical inputs with appropriate error messages.
>
> I don't think -infinity and +infinity are the right terms. For a
> string or character data type there is no -infinity and +infinity.
> Similarly for enums. We need to extend UNBOUNDED somehow to indicate
> the end of a given type in the given direction. I thought about
> UNBOUNDED LEFT/RIGHT but then whether LEFT indicates -ve side or +side
> would cause confusion. Also LEFT/RIGHT may work for a single
> dimensional datatype but not for multi-dimensional spaces. How about
> MINIMUM/MAXIMUM or UNBOUNDED MIN/MAX to indicate the extremities.
>
Yes, I think you're right. Also, some datatypes include values that
are equal to +/-infinity, which would then behave differently from
unbounded as range bounds, so it wouldn't be a good idea to overload
that term.
My first thought was UNBOUNDED ABOVE/BELOW, because that matches the
terminology already in use of upper and lower bounds.
Regards,
Dean
