Steven,
> That assumes that developers will implement queries in their code
> without testing them. Unfortunately, that's probably not too far from
> reality. I've thought of it as a nice "debugging" feature while I'm
> trying to hammer out a complicated query for the first time.
I don't see how that makes a difference really. As a developer, I'd
rather prefer if I get an explanatory error result rather than a notice
(often invisible) and an incorrect result when testing. If I don't test
at all (God forbid) I want the same thing to happen the first time the
code is deployed. Anything else is really scary. I don't see how it can
be the dbms responsibility to correct erroneous SQL ever. It's
comparable to having a compiler that magically adds undeclared (or
misspelled) variables in your code. Shrug...
Is the variable settable in a session? If so, that would be good for the
purpose you mention.
Regards,
Thomas Hallgren
