Re: Why forbid "INSERT INTO t () VALUES ();" - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Isaac Morland
Subject Re: Why forbid "INSERT INTO t () VALUES ();"
Date
Msg-id CAMsGm5e9RmakEn0zDKKAQ5=oDT42v+jh6Qki6ToX+9hTQ9GSFg@mail.gmail.com
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In response to Why forbid "INSERT INTO t () VALUES ();"  (Fabien COELHO <coelho@cri.ensmp.fr>)
Responses Re: Why forbid "INSERT INTO t () VALUES ();"
List pgsql-hackers
On Wed, 24 Jun 2020 at 08:18, Fabien COELHO <coelho@cri.ensmp.fr> wrote:
I would like to create an "all defaults" row, i.e. a row composed of the 
default values for all attributes, so I wrote:

   INSERT INTO t() VALUES ();

This is forbidden by postgres, and also sqlite.

This is not the only area where empty tuples are not supported. Consider:

PRIMARY KEY ()

This should mean the table may only contain a single row, but is not supported.

Also, GROUP BY supports grouping by no columns, but not in a systematic way: Using aggregate functions with no explicit GROUP BY clause will result in grouping by no columns (i.e., entire result set is one group); I also found that I could GROUP BY NULL::integer, abusing the column number syntax. But things like GROUP BY ROLLUP () are not supported.

On the plus side, empty rows are supported, although the explicit ROW keyword is required.

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