Re: Aggregate ORDER BY patch - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Hitoshi Harada
Subject Re: Aggregate ORDER BY patch
Date
Msg-id e08cc0400911131026w8098543y75f3c0f10d4dcf4@mail.gmail.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Aggregate ORDER BY patch  (Andrew Gierth <andrew@tao11.riddles.org.uk>)
List pgsql-hackers
2009/11/14 Andrew Gierth <andrew@tao11.riddles.org.uk>:
>>>>>> "Heikki" == Heikki Linnakangas <heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com> writes:
>
>  >> No artificial restrictions are imposed on what syntactical
>  >> combinations are allowed. However, ORDER BY is not allowed with
>  >> aggregates used as window functions (as per the existing
>  >> restriction on DISTINCT).
>
>  Heikki> How is this different from window functions?
>
> Window functions return a row for each row of input, aggregates don't.
>
> The reason I didn't tackle the case of aggregate functions used as
> window functions is that the spec allows constructs like this:
>
> array_agg(a order by b) over (order by c)
>
> which can't be represented using the aggregate-as-window-function
> mechanism as it currently stands, since you'd have to re-sort the
> window each time.
>
Now I'm about to send my patch to introduce more frame types,
aggregate cache mechanism in window functions may be broken sometimes,
and it is *possible* to put order-by clause in argument list if we
prepare tuplesort as in nodeAgg. But I don't see useful cases and it
seems so hard task that I'm not sold.


Regards,



--
Hitoshi Harada


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