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From: David Christensen <david@pgguru.net>
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2024 11:48:35 -0500
Message-ID: <CAHM0NXg4-gjJZT8VZf-=qq1S=jSMxfv9qQaQAO0EGZe8d5r+6g@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] GROUP BY ALL
To: Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at>
Cc: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>, 
	pgsql-hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
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On Tue, Jul 23, 2024 at 10:57=E2=80=AFAM Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cyberte=
c.at> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 2024-07-23 at 08:37 -0500, David Christensen wrote:
> > My intention here was to basically be a shorthand for "group by
> > specified non-aggregate fields in the select list".  Perhaps I'm not
> > being creative enough, but what is the interpretation/use case for
> > anything else? :-)
>
> I am somewhat against this feature.
> It is too much magic for my taste.
>
> It might be handy for interactive use, but I would frown at an applicatio=
n
> that uses code like that, much like I'd frown at "SELECT *" in applicatio=
n code.

Sure, not everything that makes things easier is strictly necessary;
we could require `CAST(field AS text)` instead of `::text`, make
subqueries required for transforming oids into specific system tables
instead of `::regfoo` casts,  any number of other choices, remove
`SELECT *` as a parse option, but making it easier to do common things
interactively as a DBA has value as well.

David