Shouldn't Natural JOINs Follow FK Constraints?
Howdy,
I just saw this in the docs:
Finally, NATURAL is a shorthand form of USING: it forms a USING list
consisting of exactly those column names that appear in both input
tables. As with USING, these columns appear only once in the output
table.
That sounds useful if I happen to have named my columns exactly the
same between the two tables, but couldn't a NATURAL JOIN follow the FK
constraints, instead? That would be so much more useful and much less
magical, I should think.
Thanks,
David
On Fri, 2008-05-30 at 13:19 -0700, David E. Wheeler wrote:
Howdy,
I just saw this in the docs:
Finally, NATURAL is a shorthand form of USING: it forms a USING list
consisting of exactly those column names that appear in both input
tables. As with USING, these columns appear only once in the output
table.That sounds useful if I happen to have named my columns exactly the
same between the two tables, but couldn't a NATURAL JOIN follow the FK
constraints, instead? That would be so much more useful and much less
magical, I should think.
A good point, but I'm sure the SQL standard has something to say about
this, so I don't think we have much of a choice.
Regards,
Jeff Davis