Re: Perhaps a possible new feature to a future PostgreSQL release

On Mon, 2023-11-20 at 09:52 +0000, Erki Eessaar wrote:
> Let me assume that there is a table T with columns a, b, c, d, e, f, g, and h.
> 
> If one wants to select data from all the columns except d and e, then one has to write
> 
> SELECT a, b, c, f, g, h
> FROM T;
> 
> instead of writing 
> 
> SELECT ALL BUT (d, e)
> FROM T;
> 
> or something similar (perhaps by using keywords EXCEPT or EXCLUDE).

This has been discussed before (repeatedly); see for example
https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/CANcm6wbR3EG7t-G%3DTxy64Yt8nR6YbpzFRuTewJQ%2BkCq%3DrZ8M2A%40mail.gmail.com

All previous attempts went nowhere.


> I think that such syntax would be useful and if more and more DBMS-s start to
> offer it, then perhaps one day it will be in the SQL standard as well.

One of the reasons *against* the feature is that the SQL standard committee
might one day come up with a feature like that using a syntax that conflicts
with whatever we introduced on our own.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe