Re: wCTE: about the name of the feature

On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 11:20 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> The wCTE patch refers to the feature it's adding as "DML WITH".  I'm
> still pretty unhappy with that terminology.  In my view of the world,
> "DML" includes SELECT as well as INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE.  The wikipedia
> entry about the term
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Manipulation_Language
> agrees that that's at least the majority usage, and even our own docs
> seem to use it to include SELECT as often as not.  Since the distinction
> is absolutely critical to talking about this feature sensibly, I don't
> think it's a good plan to use an acronym that is guaranteed to produce
> uncertainty in the reader's mind.
>
> The best idea I have at the moment is to spell out "data modifying
> command" (or "statement") rather than relying on the acronym.
> In the code, we could change hasDmlWith to hasModifyingWith, for
> example.  The error messages could read like
>        data-modifying statement in WITH is not allowed in a view
>
> Comments?

Great idea.  I had the same complaint when I looked at this patch a
year ago, but didn't come up with nearly as good an idea as to what to
do about it.

-- 
Robert Haas
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