On Tue, 30 Mar 2021 at 15:33, Joel Jacobson <joel@compiler.org> wrote:
Also, should the join be a left join, which would therefore return a NULL when there is no matching record? Or could we have a variation such as ->? to give a left join (NULL when no matching record) with -> using an inner join (record is not included in result when no matching record).
Interesting idea, but I think we can keep it simple, and still support the case you mention:
If we only have -> and you want to exclude records where the column is NULL (i.e. INNER JOIN),
I think we should just use the WHERE clause and filter on such condition.
Just to be clear, it will always be a left join? Agreed that getting the inner join behaviour can be done in the WHERE clause. I think this is a case where simple is good. As long as the left join case is supported I'm happy.
Thanks for the encouraging words. I have exactly the same experience myself and share your view.
I look forward to continued discussion on this matter.
I had another idea: maybe the default name of a foreign key constraint to a primary key should simply be the name of the target table? That is, if I say:
FOREIGN KEY (...) REFERENCES t
... then unless the table name t is already in use as a constraint name, it will be used as the constraint name. It would be nice not to have to keep repeating, like this:
