maria-developers team mailing list archive

[Varun Gupta <varungupta1803@xxxxxxxxx>]

Well in HSQL we have the limitation of having maximum of 4 arguments , but
in our syntax we can increase the number of arguments.The main thing is
what I understood from HSQL and PostgreSQL is that an aggregate function
would have 2 states.
1)  when we compute the result that is the result keeps on getting updated
on various calls to the function
2)  when we return the result

HSQL does that using the flag so we need to call an additional time with
flag == TRUE so that result is returned .
While in PostgreSQL we split the work into two regular functions . The
problem is that the second function in PostgreSQL is optional so that adds
to a bit of confusion.

The syntax for ORACLE I did not understand properly, would give it a try
again .

For SYBASE I have been going through:
http://infocenter.sybase.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.sybase.infocenter.dc01034.1510/doc/html/asc1238775307180.html

For SQL server
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-in/library/ms182741.aspx

DB2 does not support user-defined aggregate functions
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/0309stolze/0309stolze.html





On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 4:10 PM, Sergei Golubchik <serg@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi, Varun!
>
> On Mar 02, Varun Gupta wrote:
> > Well i have checked out the syntax for the databases for aggregate
> > functions. I thought using the syntax similar to that of HSQL would be
> > good. In it if we are having N tuples then we are computing the values
> for
> > the N rows and then after that we make another call and return the value
> > for the function. Well this seems very reasonable to do. Using PostgreSQL
> > <http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/sql-createaggregate.html>  we
> > need to have two regular functions but if we have an aggregate function
> > like Count(column_name) , then this would be done in just a single
> function
> > , I guess we would not need two functions for it .
>
> Yes, I agree about PostgreSQL syntax. An aggregate function there
> has "artefacts" - two regular functions that show up in the list of
> functions and can be called directly too. I think this is confusing.
>
> HSQL syntax, I mean, exactly as in HSQL, is full of random limitations.
> http://hsqldb.org/doc/guide/sqlroutines-chapt.html#src_aggregate_functions
>
> In HSQL an aggregate function can have only *one* argument, and the
> state is, always, exactly *two* variables. We, of course, won't have
> these limitation, if we'll do HSQL-style syntax.
>
> But this syntax is also kind of hackish. One function that has two
> different semantics and the 'flag' argument that selects which one to
> use. And many parameters in the function declaration, while only one is
> in the function invocation.
>
> Oracle uses an object-oriented syntax.
>
> Did you find any other DBMS that support this feature?
>
> Regards,
> Sergei
> Chief Architect MariaDB
> and security@xxxxxxxxxxx
>